Jack was the sheriff of a small Oregon town called Eureka, and he’d been its sheriff for almost ten years now.

From the outside, Eureka didn’t look too different from any other sleepy small town, but looks were deceiving.

After the war, with the help of Albert Einstein and other trusted advisors, President Truman commissioned a top-secret residential development in the Pacific Northwest that would serve to protect and nurture America's most valuable intellectual resources. America's greatest thinkers, the uber-geniuses working on the next generation of scientific advances, would be able to live and work in a supportive environment.

So was born Eureka - a secretive government-run company town operated by a government-controlled corporation called Global Dynamics (GD) that, due to the nature of the research done there, is overseen by the United States Department of Defense. The town's existence and location are therefore closely guarded secrets.

Ever since then, the town remained at the most cutting edge of state-of-the-art. The government kept their technologies hush-hush, of course, and pumped all of the inventions and discoveries of the town’s geniuses through GD for the purpose of giving the technology providence and a totally innocuous and completely legal paper trail that leads away from any connection to a town of geniuses called Eureka.

For all its familiar, small-town trappings, things in this seemingly normal town were anything but ordinary. Most of the quantum leaps in science and technology during the past 60 years were produced by Eureka's elite researchers, but their experiments go awry regularly, inevitable if all you had were geniuses who had very little time for boring things like safety and security.

That was why the town’s police force, in the person of the sheriff and his deputies, was so important. However, after an accident that took his leg, Sheriff William Cobb decided to retire, and the Department of Defense hired Jack Carter, a US Marshal passing through town at the time and helping them with solving the latest “incident.”

And for more than five years, Jack Carter did his best to cope, handling everything that came the town’s way with dedication, humor and his own brand of homespun street smarts that none of the scientists seemed to have. He even had time to fall in love with Global Dynamics’ brilliant director, Dr. Allison Blake, and to find a best friend, Dr. Henry Deacon, who happened to be Eureka’s smartest genius as well as the town’s mayor.

However, after over sixty years of never-ending accidents, emergencies and skyrocketing costs, the government decided to shut down the magnificent experiment.

The town’s citizens didn’t take that sitting down, of course. With the help of a secret super-rich benefactor with the clearly made-up name of “Trent Rockwell,” they “bought” the town from the government, and they’ve been running Eureka and Global Dynamics on their own ever since.

It was a wake-up call for the townsfolk because, ever since, for over five years now, they’ve had to cope on their own and earn their own keep (they didn’t have access to the government’s bottomless wallet anymore), and not turn to the government for everything.

That’s partly why Jack was on his way to Eureka’s town limits to welcome its new client.

Dr. Jennifer Connery, one of the world’s foremost roboticists, was working on a hush-hush project over at the government’s other super-secret brain trust, Area 51, but she had hit a snag that she couldn’t seem to solve.

She, through Defense Department intermediaries, contacted Allison Blake and Henry Deacon and, despite their misgivings at working with the Defense Department again, they couldn’t turn down the $500 million up-front fee. Besides, it was a chance to work with the famous Doctor Connery, the so-called Queen of Robots.

- - - - -

As he was driving, Jack’s communicator started beeping, and he pulled it out. It was Dr. Allison Blake, Jack’s wife of five years, and GD’s present COO.

“Hey, Allison,” he said pleasantly, “what’s up?”

“Hi, Jack,” Allison replied. “The kids and I just left for my folks a few minutes ago. Just wanted to make sure you’re all set.”

“Aw, Allison, I can manage. Say hi to your folks for me. I’m sure they’re still in shock that we got married. And tell your brother he still owes me money from before.”

Allison laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell Marcus that. Sarah has the house fully stocked so you’ll be okay until we get back on Saturday, and Henry’s all set for Dr. Connery.”

“Great, great. How about Andy?”

“Great idea on that, by the way. Henry just finished running him through a checkout in the robotics lab in Section Ten, and had him spruced up and cleaned. I’m sure Dr. Connery will be pleased to check him out.”

“Good to know. Ummm, you’re not driving, are you?”

“Ah, no. Kevin is.“

“Ummm, do you think that’s a good idea?”

Allison sighed. “Jack, he’s seventeen already. And he’s had his driver’s license for a month!”

“Well...”

“Lemme, put you on speakerphone.”

“Ummm...”

“Hey, Jack,” Kevin, Allison’s son from her first marriage, said. “How’s it going?”

“I’m good. How about you?”

“God, Jack! We’re not even ten minutes from the house!”

“I’m sorry, Kev. I’m just a bit worried – you’re driving your sisters and your mom...”

He sighed. “I’ll be careful. Mom and the girls will be safe.”

“Good enough for me! How’s Jenna? How’s little Kimmy doing? She liking the car ride so far?”

Kevin laughed. “She’s been giggling nonstop! She and Jenna are pretty good. They’re in the back seat with mom.”

“Great! Okay, Big Kev. I’m counting on you to take care of the family, okay?”

“You’re worse than Mom, Jack. Anyway, leave us alone so I can concentrate.”

Jack laughed. “Okay, Kev. Bye, Allison! Give the girls a kiss for me.”

“Talk to you later, Jack. Love you!”

Allison hung up, and Jack suddenly felt lonely.

“All alone...” he muttered.

Jack worried if Allison’s kids, Kev and Jenna, and his own daughter from his first marriage, Zoe, would take to little Kimmie, but they took to her right away, and Kev and, especially, Zoe fell in love with their little bundle of sunshine. In fact, for her two-week vacation this year, she decided to spend it in Eureka just so she can spend time with her five-year-old little sister. Which is amazing since she rarely takes time off from being a medical research resident in Johns Hopkins.

He stopped at Eureka’s single stoplight, and waited for the green light.

There was a girl at the corner, also waiting for the light to change. It was ridiculous, actually, as there was no traffic. But the two of them still waited.

Jack and the girl looked at each other and both burst into laughter. Well, Jack did. The girl didn’t and just looked like she was laughing. Ellie was one of the kids of one of Eureka’s top researchers. She was both deaf and mute, owing to a congenital ear defect. And she was just waiting for the doctors to tell her she was old enough to receive her new hearing implant, and that should be any day now.

“Why don’t you cross?” he signed to the fourteen-year old.

“Why don’t you?” she signed back.

“Can’t,” he replied. “I’m the sheriff – I have to show an example.”

Jack learned Sign Language when he was growing up with a deaf best friend – a skill which helped him get to know Ellie. In fact, Jack became one of Ellie’s closest friends, almost like a big brother or uncle – in fact, her only real adult friend.

Ellie stuck her tongue out at him, and giggled again.
The lights changed.

“Light’s green,” she signed.

“Right,” he replied. “have a good day, Ellie.”

“Later, Jack.” And the girl crossed the street, skipping all the way.

Jack passed the last of the town’s houses, and streetlights gave way to trees and more trees. Typical Oregon forest. So he started to pay more attention to his driving. Can’t afford to have an accident, he thought, without anyone around to help.

Normally, this need to meet visitors didn’t used to be necessary - it used to be that visitors would drive directly into town on their own.

But without the shield that the government used to have around Eureka, the town have had to think of other ways to discourage unwanted visitors until they could get a new shield up. So since the town’s “privatization,” electronic mapping (by special arrangement with Google and the other street mapping services) had been disabled to discourage visitors.

Jack pulled up near Eureka’s white Welcome Sign that marked the boundary of the town, and prepared to wait for the arrival of this new scientist.

The sign indicated that the town had a population of 3,501 – a little up from the old number. Over the past few years, they’ve had to hire a bunch of new people to replace the ones that did not sign on again after their previous contracts were automatically terminated when the government pulled out. Aside from these vacancies, there were also positions that used to be filled by government people so they had to hire new people for those vacancies as well.

The “1” in the count was, of course, the town’s youngest citizen - Jack’s and Allison’s new baby, Kim, named after their friend and Henry’s girlfriend, Kim Yamazaki-Anderson.

Jack didn’t have long to wait. In about fifteen minutes, a shiny, bright cherry-red Tesla Roadster came into view, and a large Freightliner box truck followed it.

The sporty Tesla pulled up right across from Jack, with the truck right behind it.

“Hi!” a beautiful brunette girl said as she leaned out of the driver-side window and waved. “You’re Sheriff Carter, from Eureka, right?”

Jack walked towards her.

“How did you guess?” Jack smiled.

She shrugged. “I don’t know – I guess there’s just something sheriff-y about you.”

Jack laughed. “Yes, I’m Sheriff Carter. You’re Dr. Jennifer Connery, then?”

“Yes, I’m afraid, and before you ask, no relation.”

“Pardon?”

“You were about to ask if I was related to Sean Connery,” she giggled.

“Ahhh. Not really, but now that you mention it...”

“Yes, no relation.”

“Got it. Anyway, I am supposed to escort you back to GD so you can meet with Dr. Henry Deacon...”

“Dr. Deacon! I’ve wanted to meet the legendary Dr. Henry Deacon for a long time now!”

Jack laughed. “Yes. Around here, we love Henry, too.”

“No doubt.”

“But I have to check some papers and check your, ummm, luggage.”

Jennifer laughed. “By all means.”

She stepped out of the car and handed Jack a folder. Jack went over all the paperwork, checking it against the papers Allison gave him the day before and they all checked out.

He then ran his little pen-scanner over the signatures and the DoD hologram seal and they all checked out as genuine.

“Hey, Sheriff Carter?” Jennifer asked. ”Can you take a picture?” She handed Carter her phone.

“Sure.”

He took a picture of her leaning against the town’s Welcome Sign.

“Thanks!” she said, and took her phone back.

“Send me a copy of that. Ummm, Doctor Connery,” he said, “I need to check your truck now.”

“Of course, Sheriff. And please call me Jennifer,” she said, and led him to the truck.

The truck’s driver and two others dressed in US army tactical uniforms, and very well armed, too, got out of the truck’s cab.

At Jack’s approach, the three actually saluted.

“At ease guys,” Jack said, “just your friendly neighborhood sheriff.” He turned to Jennifer. “Well, that’s a change.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as she led him to the back of the truck. The three soldiers followed.

“The saluting.” Jack aped the soldiers.

“Well, they’ve been briefed for this delivery run to Eureka, and they know all about you. You’re sort of a legend over in Area 51.”

“Is that so?” he grinned.

“I’m afraid it is,” Jennifer laughed.

She opened the back of the truck and stepped aside.

“Here you go.”

Jack nodded and climbed inside.

“Holy!” Jack cried. In the back of the truck was a giant figure in shadow. It had two glowing red eyes. Jack was startled, to say the least.

“Sorry, Sheriff,” Jennifer said as she climbed up as well. “That’s my robot. Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”

Jack just nodded, brought up his scanner and pressed a button. A bright flash like a camera flash bathed the inside of the truck. The robot stirred and stood, and raised an arm, palm forward. He looked like Iron Man trying to fire a repulsor beam or something.

But nothing came from his palm, and all Jack heard was empty clicking, like the clicks from a camera.

“What’s it doing?”

“Ross thinks you’re trying to hurt him so he was trying to fire his weapon at you, but he’s been disarmed.” She waved it down and the robot lowered its arm.

“Oh. What is it usually armed with?”

“Anything at all. But standard are electronic stunner guns that have the effect of mild tasers.”

“Well, thank god it’s disarmed. But isn’t that dangerous? What if your robot does that again when it’s armed?”

Jennifer nodded. “You’re right, of course. Ross isn’t finished, and that one is one of the things I’m still fixing. That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping to ask your people to help me finish him. What was that flash about?”

“A hologram camera. I was cross-checking your truck’s contents with the list that was provided us.” He looked at a little screen he held in his hand. “And everything checks out except those three cases.” He pointed to them. “I take it this one’s you personal effects?”

“Yes.” She opened it and Jack ran the scanner over it.

“What about these two? My scanner can’t see the contents. Are they shielded?”

Jennifer hesitated.

“Come on, Dr. Connery. I have to know what’s in there. Otherwise, I can’t let you into the town.”

“All right,” she finally said. “To answer your question, yes, the crates are shielded. They contain various weapons and components of weapons, to be tested out on the robot platform.”

“You mean ‘Ross.’”

“Yes.” She brought out a key and opened the crates.

Jack peeked inside and recognized several of the pieces – they were mostly advanced hand weapons of Eureka design. The Global Dynamics logo stamped on the sides confirmed it. It seemed that it wasn’t just the soldiers that had been studying up on Eureka.

He looked back at Jennifer. “I have to call in these weapons,” he said, and brought up his communicator and called Henry.

Jennifer and the soldiers could hear their conversation clearly, but Jack wasn’t really trying to keep it quiet.

Essentially, Jack told Henry that Jennifer needed the weapons for her work with “Ross,” but he wasn’t happy to have weapons outside of Section Five, so Henry was forced to have Jack bring the weapons into GD instead of Jennifer. Jack got the soldiers to move the two crates of weapons to the back of his jeep and Jennifer shut the truck back up.

So the three vehicles made for GD, with Jack’s jeep at the head followed by Dr. Connery, and the truck trailing.

In less than twenty minutes, they reached what looked like an old washed-out bridge with a broken-down “Bridge Out” sign and barrier stopping people from continuing on.

Jack stopped, and the others stopped as well.

Jack got out of the car and went to Jennifer’s window.

“Bridge out, huh, Sheriff,” Jennifer said.

“Listen,” he said to Jennifer, “you’re gonna see something incredible. But you have to trust me and follow my lead, okay?”

Though Jennifer was puzzled, she nodded nevertheless.

Jack went to the truck and told the driver the same thing.

After which, Jennifer and her soldiers did, indeed, see an incredible thing – Jack driving his car to the bridge, and, as he reached it, he and his jeep disappeared.

“It’s some kind of hologram!” Jennifer exclaimed. After a few moments, Jennifer decided to trust Jack, took a deep breath and floored the accelerator!

As soon as she passed the image of the broken-down bridge, it was like she emerged into a totally different place. She saw a long road and, in the distance was a big, high-tech kind of building on a low hill festooned with several large radar and microwave antennae, and other things that she barely recognized.

Jack had pulled up several hundred meters away. It seemed that he knew she’d floor the gas, and had given her enough room so she wouldn’t rear-end him. She pulled up behind him.

After a minute, the truck also barreled through.

Jack gave them a moment to get their wits back, and then they continued on.

After passing through a more conventional security gate manned by human guards, they were in Global Dynamics, arguably the most advanced scientific research facility in the world.

They parked in an underground loading dock, where technicians and other people helped unload all of Dr. Connery’s equipment onto large carts, and brought it all to the Robotics Lab in Section Ten.

As for her robot, it followed her obediently. It was over seven feet tall and had a menacing, robotic look. Sure, it had two arms, two legs, a head and a torso, but no other efforts were taken to make it look more humanoid. It didn’t even have proper hands or even a face – totally mechanical and robotic.

As Jennifer and her little procession, minus Jack, crossed the main rotunda, Henry came over.

“Dr. Connery,” he said, extending his hand, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your reputation as one of the world’s foremost roboticists precedes you. Andy, your other robot, has been a great help to the town. Welcome to GD.”

“As does yours,” she smiled and shook his hand. “Thank you, Doctor Deacon. It’s great to finally meet the legendary genius.”

“Thank you so much!”

“I’m afraid to say, though, that Andy isn’t completely mine. I only designed his basic endoskeleton, motorized muscles, navigation, motor actuators and controllers. But the rest are mostly from DARPA, MIT, Ohio State, Cornell and Carnegie-Mellon university labs.”

“Ahhh. I didn’t know that.”

Henry went around her and looked at her new giant robot up close.

“So this is your robot. Big fella, isn’t he? What’s his name?”

“Yes, he is. We call him ‘Ross.’”

Given Jack’s discovery of the weapons, Henry re-evaluated this new project. It would almost seem that this “Ross” robot wasn’t just any robot, but was indeed some kind of weapons system from the Department of Defense. And looking at the robot itself now, Henry thought that assumption was probably correct. Maybe it would be better to house Dr. Connery and her robot in Section Five, after all, Henry thought. In the end, though, Henry decided to give Jennifer the benefit of the doubt and just let her new billeting in Section Ten stand. They’d know soon enough if there was something to worry about.

Henry and Jennifer talked some more as Henry politely escorted her to her new lab.

“Where’s Sheriff Carter, by the way?” Jennifer asked as they stepped into a large cargo elevator.

“He’s taken your weapons over to Section Five for inventory,” he answered. “I’m sorry about that, Doctor, but we needed to do that. Safety et cetera, et cetera.”

“No need to apologize. I totally understand.” She looked at the indicator lights. “Where are we going?”

The elevator opened and they all stepped out into a wide hallway with several large warehouse-size doors on the left side, all marked.

Henry started leading them down the hall.

“The GD plant is made up of several levels. What you see aboveground are the main offices – what we call Section One. The laboratories and research facilities are in all the other sections underground. Like here.

“Section Two is dedicated to the Quantum Frequency Project.” He gestured to the first set of doors marked “Section Two.”

“Section Three is Records and Primate Studies,” he continued, as they were about to pass its doors. “Section Four is the EM barrier control room. Right now Section Four isn’t in use - still undergoing refit. The government took our EM and other defense shields and systems and we’re required not to replicate them. We’re currently brainstorming equivalent technology to replace all of it at the moment. Right now it’s pretty empty.”

“The people I’ve talked to always mention Section Five...”

Henry grinned. “Well, yes, Section Five is pretty well known. It’s the section for military tech. But we’ve lost almost eighty percent of our military projects, so the labs there are looking pretty empty as well. We’re still trying to find other contracts to cover for the revenue shortfall, actually.”

“Are we going to Section Five, then?”

Henry looked at her suspiciously. “Are you saying Ross is a military robot, then, Dr. Connery?”

“Oh, not at all,” she replied. “I guess I was just hoping to see Section Five. Besides, your contract is with the Defense Department, after all, right?”

Henry looked at her suspiciously.

“If it’s not a military robot, then what kind of robot is it?”

“It’s an all-purpose robot – it can be programmed to do anything - its arms can be changed to use any tool or implement, its legs can be changed for any kind of locomotion system for any terrain. It’s meant to handle anything, especially repetitive, predictable or managed tasks, with the highest level of precision.”

“That includes handling firearms, then?”

She shrugged. “Of course. I work for the Defense Department, after all. I can’t be naive about it.”

“I suppose.”

“So where am I going to be?”

“You’re going to be in Section Ten,” he said. “The Robotics Labs are there, as well as other labs. You’ll find everything you need there, and everyone is ready to collaborate or assist.”

As they passed Section Five, they heard someone call out.

“Henry!” Jack called.

They all turned, including Ross – it swiveled its whole upper torso via a hinge at the waist.

“You gotta see this!” Jack’s tone made him sound excited but he had a worried look on his face. He held up what looked like a high-tech sawed-off chrome shotgun.

Suddenly, Ross swiveled around again, with its arm outstretched. The blow hit Jack and threw him against the wall. The shotgun-like thing clattered to the ground.

Ross looked at the shotgun for a moment, and then started moving towards it, its arm outstretched to pick it up.

Thinking fast, Jack dived for the gun and grabbed it. Ross was an instant too late. Instead, it whipped it arm up and Jack was thrown to the other side of the hall, and Jack fetched up against the doors to Section Nine. Jack saw that it didn’t have a red restricted light on the door controls, so he pressed the button. The doors slid aside.

“Henry, call Jo!” Jack yelled, and dived through the doors. He pressed the button inside and the doors slid closed again. Jack used his sidearm and fired at the controls, jamming the door closed.

He sighed. But then, the robot started hammering at the doors. Jack saw the door starting to buckle so he backed up.

Looking around, he noted that there was little to hide behind or to distract the robot. He didn’t have a choice so he stood behind a big freestanding cabinet. He stuck the high-tech shotgun into the belt behind his back, and held his handgun ready.

The pounding on the doors continued. The power of the robot was incredible because the doors, designed to withstand almost any kind of weapon currently known, started to give way.

“Just another day in Eureka,” Jack muttered and took aim at the doors. “Everybody back!” he called, and the people in Section Nine moved farther back into the labs.

After the doors went down, the giant robot was revealed standing there.

It stepped through the wrecked doorway. Jack waited until Ross was well inside the lab and opened fire, but his bullets just bounced off harmlessly.

“Shoulda known that,” he said. The robot moved surprisingly fast so Jack hurried to the back of another cabinet.

He ejected the empty clip and slapped in a new one. Peeking around the shelf, he sighted down his gun and aimed at specific areas – places where he thought the robot would be vulnerable, like joints, hinges, the neck or on the faceplate.

None of the spots he hit seemed vulnerable, but when he hit the joint at the robot’s right shoulder, the robot stopped. That arm dropped and it seemed like it couldn’t move it anymore.

But Ross seemed to decide to ignore that and started moving again.

That galvanized Jack. His shot told him he was on the right track and started reloading his gun. But the robot was already getting close.

Jack hit the cabinet with his shoulder and made it fall on top of Ross.

Many of the devices on the shelf were plugged in or powered up or doing whatever they were doing, so a lot of them exploded.

Jack had an instinct that told him that wouldn’t really cause much damage to Ross, so he backed up behind the next shelf, and finished reloading.

“Now’s your chance!” he called to the others in Section Nine. “Everybody out!”

All the frightened scientists ran for the broken doors and escaped out into the hallway.

As he expected, the robot wasn’t hurt much and, after a minute, it started to get up. It approached him again, and Jack made the new shelf crash on it again. There was another series of explosions but Ross recovered more quickly. Jack knew it wouldn’t fall for that trick again.

As it stood up, Jack moved back to the next shelf. But the robot stood well back this time.

Jack fired his gun again but didn’t get to hit any new vulnerable spots.

Aside from being able to learn, Ross also seemed to know anger, as well as to carry grudges.

The robot reached out with its good arm and pushed the shelf and, this time, the shelf fell over Jack.

This particular shelf was full of glass containers full of certain chemicals, and as the cryogenic containers broke, some of them quickly hissed into steam in the thermal heat caused by exploding equipment.

The robot then moved on to the next shelf and made it fall on top of Jack as well.

The equipment on that new shelf exploded as well, and several flashes exploded like little flashbulbs.

More of the chemicals from the previous shelf sublimated into steam but they quickly dissipated.

“Hey!” Jo Lupo, GD’s head of security called out and fired her gun at the robot.

Her shots were just as ineffective as Jack’s, as well as the shots fired by her security staff. Ross looked back at Jo and her people, and started moving towards them.

“Everybody back,” Jo called. “Keep on firing!”

But the robot was relentless and, in moments, was in the hallway. And everyone was out in the hallway, too.

Jo and her people stopped firing since they were clearly not hurting the robot, and they could actually hurt someone with a stray shot or ricochet.

The robot was now standing in the hallway, and everyone had scattered. Only Henry, Jo and her people stayed. Jennifer stood by Henry as well while she frantically pushed buttons on a tablet. Presumably, the tablet was the robot’s control. In any case, they seemed to have no effect.

The robot started making for them, and then someone called.

“Hey, Ross!” someone yelled. It was a tall blonde girl wearing a loose khaki-colored sheriff’s uniform, but no pants. She stood in Section Nine’s broken doorway.

Ross swiveled his torso like before and, when he was facing the girl, she lifted the chrome shotgun Jack brought and fired it. A loud explosion reverberated in the hall and, whatever it was, it blew eighty percent of Ross’s head clean off.

In the sudden stillness, Ross stopped moving. And, after a moment, it toppled to the ground.

“Hey, Jo,” the mysterious girl said.

“Who are...” And then Jo noticed the uniform shirt. “Is that you, Jack?”

“None other,” the girl replied, and then fell down in a dead faint.

- - - - -

So they had Ross the headless robot quarantined in Section Ten, and questioned their new scientist, Dr. Connery, and cleaned up Section Nine. Investigations were ongoing, and repairs were underway. Things should be back to normal in a day or so.

As for Jack, they had the new girl checked out as thoroughly as they knew how, and had her released from the medical section in six hours with a completely clean bill of health.

So there he was in Henry’s office, after stopping by the cafeteria for several sandwiches (he was unaccountably famished), looking at himself in a mirror someone got from somewhere. At best, he looked like some twenty-year-old blonde hottie. Maybe younger. A lot younger. God.

The choice of clothes wasn’t that glamorous, he thought, but he seemed to be able to make it work. And, looking at his reflection, he was doing more than just making it work.

He wished Pilar had picked something more conservative. Now, he was thinking it was a mistake that he gave her his credit card for her to buy him a temporary wardrobe. He didn’t have a choice - Henry said it might take him a while before he figured out what happened to Jack, and even longer to figure out how to reverse the effect.

All Henry could tell him at the moment was that the chemicals and the flashes were what caused it. The question now was what exactly happened, and how to reverse it. The fact that Section Nine was GD’s “Epigenetic, Electrogenetic and Recombinant DNA Lab” gave Jack and idea, and it worried him.

As best as everyone could tell, he was completely normal and... non-infectious. For a girl, that is. And if Jack couldn’t trust the smartest people in the world, whom could he trust.

However, he worried if this change was permanent. He was sure Henry can find a way to change him back, but he still worried.

He thought he looked pretty good. But he looked a trifle young. He looked even younger than Zoe. Jailbait was the word he would have used. If he caught someone like his old self ogling the girl in the mirror, he’d have to say that guy was acting creepy, and would have half a mind to have a talk with him.

But it was him that was ogling himself. So would it technically be “ogling?” He was just looking at himself, after all.

This situation was really pretty weird, and actually a bit scary. But he had to hold himself together – I am the sheriff, after all, he thought. At least for now.

He wondered if he could still be the sheriff, or if the people will still want him to be the sheriff, once his changes had sunk in.

Eureka was pretty enlightened as far as sexual discrimination and equal opportunity employment went, but he was enough of a realist to know that the way people interacted with him would change, not to mention what they thought of him. Especially now.

Time will tell.

He continued to stare at himself. He still couldn’t get used to it. I’m sure Kevin will like the new me, he thought, grinning. But as he thought about it more, he frowned. That was creepy on several levels. God, what would Allison and the kids say?

But enough of this. He got his things and went to meet Henry outside. He and Grace agreed to put him up for a couple of days – he couldn’t face going to his house alone, as well as deal with Sarah, too.

He hoped tomorrow would be a better day, and Jennifer would be able to get that robot of hers under control. Even $500 million wasn’t enough for this, he thought.

I hope tomorrow will be a better day, he thought again.

to be continued in Episode 2: “When You’re Not Yourself” Jan. 6, Sunday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

But upon arriving in GD, Ross went berserk, and knocked Jack into Section Nine where, because of some chemicals and equipment falling and exploding on him, spontaneously changed him into a blonde hottie.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

Morning came, as it usually does. But that was the only similarity to other mornings for Sheriff Jack Carter.

For one thing, he woke up in his best friend Henry’s guest room, and he was wearing a pair of pajamas loaned to him by Henry’s wife, Grace.

For another, she was now a girl.

He swung around and put his feet on the carpet, slipping them into a pair of Grace’s fluffy bedroom slippers.

He stood up and noted, as he did last night, that Grace’s pajamas were too big for him but, noting how short the sleeves and pants legs were, he was clearly much taller than Grace. He stood up, trying to estimate how tall he was.

His best guess told him that he was the same height as before – a little over six-one. Yesterday, he was a bit taller than Henry, as before, so whatever happened to him, it didn’t change his height, at least.

He decided to go to the bathroom for his usual morning routine, but his hand went to his cheeks and chin. At least a shave wasn’t needed. Or at least not on his face. If ever he would need it – as far as he could tell, that’s not necessary yet.

He yawned and went to the room’s en-suite bathroom. Instinctively he lifted the toilet seat and then, when he lowered the pajama bottoms and his new panties, he remembered and sat down instead.

After doing his business, he decided on a shower but, as he stood up, he saw his reflection. He screamed.

- - - - -

Henry and Grace pounded up the stairs and barged into the bathroom.

“What!” Henry called and he and Grace stopped short.

They saw a new girl in the bathroom, which, at the moment, was wearing Grace’s pajama shirt and no pants, and was pointing at the bathroom mirror with a shocked look on her face.

They looked at each other and came to the same conclusion.

“Is that you, Jack?”

“Uhuh...”

“Well, that’s a new aspect of the problem.”

“All right,” Grace said, and started pushing Henry out. “Let’s give Jack some privacy so she can finish showering.” She turned to Jack. “Jack, you finish your shower, get dressed and we can have breakfast downstairs. Okay?”

Grace noticed that look on Jack’s face, and she gave him a hug. “You’re not alone, Jack,” she whispered into his ear. “You’re with friends. Henry and I will be here for you, and when Allison and the kids come back, we’ll have more help to get you back to normal.”

“I haven’t even told Sarah.” Sarah was the AI for Jack’s automated house made from an abandoned fallout shelter (“SARAH” actually stood for “Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat”).

“You haven’t?”

“No. But I asked Andy to update her on my ‘condition,’ and she told him she understood. Maybe I should go home later tonight.”

“You don’t have to. Henry and I love having you here.”

She pulled back and smiled at him. Or rather smiled up at him. Jack was fairly average for a guy, but for a girl, she was pretty tall.

“So,” Grace said, stepping away, “how about that shower?”

Jack giggled. “Okay. Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you guys downstairs for breakfast.”

“Great.”

“Hey, Grace?”

“Yeah?”

Jack reached out and gave her a hug herself.

“Thanks,” he said.

She hugged him back. “What are friends for?”

- - - - -

“So,” Henry said as Grace came back downstairs, “how’s Jack?”

“She’s pretty scared, Henry. And I can’t blame her.”

Grace probably had the same number of PhDs as Henry. But that didn’t matter to their friendship with Jack.

She probably knew Jack as well as Henry, and, like Henry, respected Jack for his being a good person, and for being smarter than all of them combined in the one thing that mattered most in Eureka – keeping the peace and keeping people safe. She, like most everyone in the town, knew Jack wasn’t the smartest person around, but he was street smart and street savvy, and he was second to none in that particular area, and would make intuitive leaps that no one ever could, and it helped him do his job, and he did it well.

But, like Henry, she mostly liked him because he was a good person. And she worried, Just like Henry, that such a good person had to endure this kind of thing.

“I just wish we could help her more,” Grace continued.

“I know, honey,” Henry said to Grace. “I would be scared, too. This new thing... He’s changed again! But not into himself, or to a guy. He’s changed into another girl!”

“I saw. But did you notice that she’s about the same height? Totally different girl but still the same height.”

“Yeah. That’s a major clue. Dammit, this isn’t my area! It’s more yours and Allison’s. I wish she were here. Maybe I should give her a call. Get her to come back from her vacation.”

“Well, I think you should ask Jack first. If she hasn’t called Allison by now, maybe she doesn’t want her back, at least not yet.”

“I think you’re right, Grace. Okay, I’ll talk to Jack first. In the meantime, I’ll ask the Section Nine guys what they found out. And we need to get him in for another checkup.”

Whatever happened to Jack yesterday happened in Section Nine, GD’s Epigenetic, Electrogenetic and Recombinant DNA Lab, so Grace and Henry knew that whatever caused this would be genetic in nature.

Hopefully, the people he had from Section Nine working on it would have some more information when they get to the office today.

- - - - -

Jack finished his shower and stepped out, rubbing his still-blonde but straighter hair dry.

It wasn’t as long as yesterday’s hair but long enough. Keeping in mind what Pilar told him yesterday, instead of just towel-drying it, he took the hair dryer from the top of the bathroom cabinet and proceeded to dry his hair. When he felt his new, blonde hair was dry enough, he used the brush he found and started to comb it out. He didn’t know much about hairstyles so he just settled for combing it out plain and straight.

He looked at the mirror, and he wasn’t really blonde the way he was last time. This time, his blondeness was closer to silver than yesterday’s. And the hair was much shorter now, and was in what he knew was called a bob cut.

This new face of his was also a bit older. Maybe about twenty-five at most, just like Zoe, and seemed more sophisticated. At least she wasn’t jailbait anymore. But still a hottie. In his opinion, he thought he was pretty enough to be a model. He sighed. What to do, what to do, he thought.

He went and got the big GD gym bag Henry gave him yesterday, which had his old guy clothes, the clothes Pilar bought for him, and other things from his car.

Pilar Reed and his daughter Zoe were best friends in high school, and though they went to different colleges later, the two kept in touch.

Whereas Zoe went to Harvard (she eventually transferred to Johns Hopkins for her medical degree), Pilar went to France, and was currently finishing up a degree in fashion at the Institute Francais de la Mode in Paris, as well as getting a graduate degree in industrial chemistry and physical therapy specializing in neuromuscular facilitation. This wasn’t too unusual, actually - many from Eureka often take degrees in multiple disciplines.

Jack was glad Pilar was in GD for her six-month internship, not just because she could help him out with picking out clothes, but because he liked the kid, too.

But Pilar’s tastes in clothes were a little too... fashionista for Jack. Looking at what she got for him... Jack worried about the rest of the clothes she was going to get.

He didn’t have much to pick from at the moment. He picked a stretchy ice blue cashmere sweater and a pair of spandex ivory leggings that he wore over a stretchy t-shirt bra and bikini panties. He also picked the Doc Martens over the sneakers. Of course, he didn’t know these details. All he knew was that these were the ones Pilar got that fit best – apparently, his new... look was not as slim as yesterday’s. Not by much, like, he would later find, instead of being a Size Zero like yesterday, he was now a Size Two.

In fact, he would have preferred to wear the sneakers from yesterday but his feet were just a tiny bit too big. In fact, the only way the boots fit was because he used the nylon knee high socks he found, still in their wrapper when he brought them out.

Jack prayed what he picked matched and he didn’t look like a clown.

He packed up the rest of his stuff in the bag, leaving his leather jacket and gun belt out. Being a good guest, he made the bed, folded the pajamas Grace lent him, and put the towel he used in a plastic shopping bag he found, and put it in his bag with the intention of washing it later.

Walking down, he went to the kitchen and saw Henry and Grace. The two looked at him in some amazement.

“You... look pretty good, Jack,” Grace said (in fact, she looked pretty good, she thought). “Henry, close your mouth.”

“I know,” Jack sighed and put his stuff down. “Ahhh! Coffee!”

And they had a pleasant though slightly awkward breakfast. Henry commented on Jack’s appetite, but Jack didn’t understand it either.

Afterwards, they all got ready to leave. While Henry and Grace finished getting ready upstairs, Jack got ready as well. He pinned his sheriff’s badge on his new sweater, put on his gun belt and waited for the Deacons by the front door.

When they walked down, they noticed Jack again.

“Looking good, Sheriff!” Grace giggled, and Henry gave him a thumbs-up.

“Shut up, guys,” Jack said, smiling wanly, and shrugged on his leather jacket. Since it was his leather jacket, it was a trifle too large for him, but, instead of looking bad, Grace thought the jacket seemed just fashionably loose on her. And its looseness went well with his... bosoms.

Jack’s adjusting pretty good, she thought, and she was sure he’d get along fine with the kids. But I wonder what Allison will think?

On the way to GD, Jack asked to be dropped off at his office, and said he’ll just catch up.

As they drove off, people turned to look at him. He nodded and waved to the people that he knew. Though puzzled, they smiled and waved back at the pretty new stranger.

He pushed through the door to the Sheriff’s Office and sighed, happy to see something familiar.

“Boss? Is that you?”

“Andy!” Jack said. “Glad to see you!” He reached out and shook his deputy’s hand. Andy was actually a robot but, aside from a slightly literal way of dealing with things, no one would know he was a “synthetic person.”

“And you as well, Boss. If that is you...”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Forgive me, but the security camera pictures showed a different person yesterday. What happened?”

“You have access to GD’s security cameras?”

“No, but I download them and other data when there’s been an incident, in case we need them for any investigative work. It’s part of my regular security protocols.”

“Well, to answer your question, I don’t know. This morning, I just woke up and found out I changed again. I don’t mind telling you, I’m more than worried.”

“That is more than unusual.”

“So... speaking of which, anything unusual happening I should know about?”

“Nothing really. I’ve also updated Sarah about your condition. She has told me she’s worried about you, but she said for you to take your time. She’s ready to provide you with any support that you need.”

“Good to know. Tell her that I might be ready to go home soon.” He hung up his jacket and went to his desk to check on any paperwork.

“I will. Boss? Any thoughts on a uniform?” Andy gestured at his current outfit.

“I will. As soon as I clear up my paperwork...” He looked at his pristine desk and the empty in-basket. “... which I apparently have done so already...”

“I took the liberty of finishing up all of your paperwork earlier, as well as file the latest incident reports.”

“Thanks, Andy. I appreciate it.”

“So, perhaps now is an opportune time to go and take care of the uniform?”

“Oh, all right. Hold down the fort while I get some new duds.”

“Okie-dokie!”

He went to Mary’s Uniforms and Fashions a few doors down on Main Street. Mary’s was GD’s go-to supplier for all of their uniforms. In fact, Mary’s supplied the uniform needs of the Sheriff’s Office as well.

Quaint chimes clinked and tinkled as he opened the door. It always made him smile that Eureka still tried to maintain its small-town ways in the face of all the high-tech whiz-bang that they were capable of.

“Hello?” he called out.

Mary herself came over. “Yes, can I help you?”

“Hi, Mary, it’s...”

“Ohmigod,” she said, “it’s the sheriff! We heard what happened to you.” She made commiserating sounds, gave him a hug and then called her staff. “Everyone! It’s Sheriff Carter!”

Mary’s people came over and surrounded him, ooh-ing and ahh-ing, and giving him hugs.

Just like most of the people in Eureka, Mary and her staff were double, maybe even triple PhD holders, and had IQs well within the genius level. They probably only worked in the shop for fun, but their day jobs were working for GD, as everyone around town were.

“How did you know it was me?” Jack asked.

“Well –“ she gestured at the Sheriff’s star on his sweater, and at his gun belt.

“Ahhh!”

“So, you came to pick up your new uniforms, Sheriff?”

“You already made up uniforms for me?”

“Yes. Andy called last night, and told us. He gave us your measurements and we got to work on it right away. In fact, we have a couple of them ready for you.”

“Ahhh! So that’s why Andy was so anxious to get me here this morning.”

“If you’ll step this way?”

“Ummm, I think you better take my measurements again.”

“I’m sure Deputy Andy’s measurements are correct. He got them from biometric scans the GD people made.”

“Trust me.”

Mary nodded to one of her people, and she ran what looked like a high-tech flashlight over Jack – it was a GD-issued portable biometric scanner.

Mary looked at the numbers from the scanner. “Hmmm. I don’t understand how Andy could have been so off.”

“Well...” He then explained what happened.

“Oh, wow...” Mary’s staffer said. “That’s amazing! Ummm, I mean that’s terrible... but amazing, too!”

“Are you okay, Sheriff?” Mary asked.

He shrugged. “I feel fine. And Henry said I should be fine. I’ll get myself checked out in GD later.”

“Sheriff, I don’t know if we can get you another uniform right away. And what about the ones we’ve already made up?”

“That’s all right. I can wait until tomorrow, and as for the stuff you already made, I’ll take them with me now.”

“But they won’t fit!” Mary said.

“Well, you already made them up, and you never know – what if I change back?”

“Okay... shoes, too?”

- - - - -

Andy drove Jack to GD afterwards, since Jack left his patrol jeep in GD the previous day. After they parked and he transferred his stuff to the jeep, Jack and Andy went to Henry’s office. From there, they went to Section Nine and visited with the people that Henry had studying what happened.

The people from Section Nine told them what they found - they had ascertained that the liquids that Jack was drenched with when the first shelf fell on him were essentially genetic samples - DNA.

They were provided by GD employees who volunteered samples of their DNA, or some of their family members’ DNA, for the Cloned Organs Program. All volunteers: Eureka’s sense of civic duty was high. After all, they moved to the town because of their sense of duty. Aside from the great living conditions, great pay and a chance to work at the best research facility in the world, of course...

The Cloned Organs Program’s objective was to be able to grow individual organs from a person’s DNA as a viable and reliable alternative to donor organs. With the need for them ever growing, not to mention the rejection issues that organ transplants currently have, the program was an important one. It was even a big potential moneymaker for GD, actually.

When that shelf fell on Jack, he was drenched with dozens of gene samples currently being grown using artificial stem cells. That particular shelf contained samples from female employees (the shelf beside that, which had the male samples, was untouched).

What triggered the change was the equipment on the next shelf that fell on Jack. On it were prototype “genome editors” based on CRISPR technology. The main difference was that they edit and rearrange DNA fragments and epigenetic markers via electromagnetic means instead of chemically or other more conventional ways – meaning to say, the changes were induced by light, energy fields and electricity. This accounted for the multiple flashes of light that they saw in the security footage.

“Can we see that footage?” Henry asked.

The lead scientist typed on the laptop they were looking at and they saw the video of Jack fighting Dr. Connery’s robot. They saw the first shelf with the DNA fall on top of him, and then the second shelf with the equipment. What followed was what looked like several flashbulb flashes firing in rapid-fire succession from underneath the second fallen shelf.

“We counted thirty flashes, maybe thirty-two,” the scientist said. She repeated the video, but slowed it down by a factor of fifty, and each flash became more distinct.

“What’s the significance of that?” Grace asked.

“Those flashes looked just like the ones from Dr. Barrow’s device -”

“Dr. Barrows?” Jack asked.

“Anna Beatrice Barrows – the previous head of Section Nine,” Henry said.

“Anyway,” Section Nine’s lead scientist continued, “Dr. Barrows designed one of the genome editors on that shelf. Her device initiates DNA morphing via a maser. Light flashes accompany the effect. Just like those we saw in the video. But her notes also say her genome editor wasn’t functional yet...”

“But if it was functional?”

“Well, then, it means it initiated DNA remapping thirty times in ten seconds. Maybe thirty-one or thirty-two.”

Everyone became quiet.

“Is that dangerous?” Jack said.

“Extremely, Sheriff. In fact, it can cause uncontrolled mutations. That’s how Dr. Barrows died actually.”

“She’s dead?” Jack exclaimed.

“Yes,” she nodded sadly. “In fact, we’re all amazed that you are even here still alive.”

“These are all just theories, of course,” Grace said,
“so...”

Someone cleared her throat.

“Yes, Dr. Craig?” Henry said.

“We did some further digging,” Dr. Craig said. “There were samples of forty Eureka residents on the first shelf. In fact, Anna gave a sample, too. And here’s the list.”

Henry accepted a printout. He didn’t understand. “Ummm, okay?”

“Okay. Now do you notice that Ms Dawn Cameron and Dr. Jessica Hartley are on that list?”

“Yes...”

“Dawn is the daughter of one of the researchers in Section Fourteen, and Jessica is one of the primatologists from Section Three.”

“Doctor, I don’t see what this has got to do...”

Dr. Craig interrupted him by handing him a couple of glossy eight-by-ten pictures, just printed.

“The picture on top is Dawn and the other one is Dr. Hartley.”

Grace, Jack and Andy crowded around Henry and looked at the pictures.

“Oh, my goodness...” Andy said.

Dawn looked very much like how Jack looked the other day, and Dr. Hartley looked very close to how Jack looked today.

“You mean...” Henry said.

“Yes. Dr. Barrow’s device apparently worked, and it used these two girls’ DNAs!”

“Oh. My. God!” Grace exclaimed.

“But, Dr. Craig,” Henry said, “Jack doesn’t look exactly like Dr. Hartley...”

“Yes. Per Dr. Barrows’ notes, there are specific gene sequences that couldn’t be overlaid by her device, or can’t be activated. It basically made the device’s effects unpredictable and therefore, ultimately, extremely dangerous.”

“But now that the transformation has been triggered, can the effects be mapped out, at least?”

“Yes, indeed. We have Sheriff Carter’s original DNA on file, as well as Dr. Hartley’s. We will be doing that now. What’s worrying is –“ she gestured up and down at Jack, “- this. A new gene map! This is unprecedented! We have to check this again!”

“Dangerous?” Henry said.

“Probably not. If it were, it would have been instantly fatal. And here she is!”

“Still, we need to check this out.”

“Definitely! So, Sheriff Carter, if you can come this way?”

“Wait!” Jack said. “Can you reverse it?”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff Carter,” Dr. Craig said, “we don’t know, yet. We’re going through the wreckage right now, as well as whatever data we can glean from Dr. Barrows’ records. That, and our new examination of you will give us a better handle on this.”

“Okay,” he said, and turned to Andy. “Andy, I’m sorry but you have to hold down the fort again.”

“No problem, Boss,” Andy replied. “Good luck.”

Grace gave Jack a hug and wished him good luck, too.

“Listen,” Henry said, “I got Connery in isolation and Jo’s interrogating her.” Jo Lupo was GD’s head of security. “I’ll be going over her robot’s specs now...”

“Where is it?”

“It’s completely deactivated inside Section Ten. Why?”

“Well, not that I’m accusing her or anything, but I think, given she was trying to hide weapons, I wouldn’t put it past her to fiddle with the specs. It would probably be best to compare the specs with the actual robot.”

Henry looked at Jack. Clearly, Jack hasn’t lost any of his Sheriff mojo. “I’m gonna get on that right away. Hey, good luck with the tests.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

- - - - -

Sometime later, as Henry pored over the specs of Dr. Jennifer Connery’s robot, Larry, Henry’s assistant, buzzed him saying Dr. Craig and Sheriff Carter had come by.

“Send them in, Larry.”

Henry shut off his computer and gestured for them to have a seat.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, “... ummm, I mean Jack and Dr. Craig. I was expecting it to take longer.”

“Well,” Dr. Craig said, “we did, too, but after the first test, we knew what to look for. Like we said before, Sheriff Carter’s a totally normal and fully functional female – nothing to worry about, but we found that there is something we didn’t see before. Well, two things: one is that we found traces of ionizing radiation – not in amounts that can be dangerous to anyone, and it’s been going down, and we predict that all of it would be gone in a week or so.

“As you know, Doctor, ionizing radiation can produce genetic mutations. Radiation can alter the DNA within any cell. Cell damage and death is the usual result. But any mutations in the somatic cells occur only in the organism in which the mutation occurred and are therefore termed somatic or nonheritable.”

“Meaning?” Jack asked.

“Meaning, any changes that you experienced will not be passed on to any children you may have in the future.”

Henry nodded. “What else?”

“It definitely was the ionized radiation that Dr. Barrows’ machine fired into the sheriff that initiated the change, and powered with enough high frequency photons to complete it. And it fired enough times to impart enough energy to allow further changes.

“So this second change was probably inevitable, and there are probably more that Ms. Carter will experience in the next few weeks.”

“You mean I will be changing again?” Jack said.

“Yes, into one of the forty people whose DNA was on that shelf.”

“Do we at least know –“ Henry started to ask, but she interrupted.

“Given there were thirty flashes,” she said, “and there were forty samples, that’s like twenty-five percent chance we can predict who she’ll change into. Oh, wait – since she’s changed into two of them already, that’s now twenty-seven percent chance.”

“When do you think the next change will happen?”

“We don’t have enough data yet, but I can assume it’ll happen when she’s asleep. That’s when she won’t be using much energy, and therefore have enough supplemental electrical energy to power the next change.”

“Electrical energy?” Jack asked.

“Brain activity is electrical. After the first hour, when the brain goes through all its sleep cycles and goes back to Stage One, this is usually when brain activity is closest to the waking brain but there’s no muscular activity.”

“Ahhh. What if I touch a live wire or something?”

“Ummm, I suppose that can initiate a change.”

“Okay. Avoid electrocutions, then. Good safety tip.” They all laughed.

“The changes – as we can see, Sheriff, the change isn’t a hundred percent. You look very close to your DNA donor but there are enough changes that people can see differences. Between the two changes you’ve undergone. For example, your voice seems to be the same, also your height – you’re still six-one, just like when you were a man. That leads us to conclude it’s the interaction between the donor DNA and your original DNA.”

“Any other things that would remain the same?”

“We’ll be able to catalog those when we’ve seen you morph into other women.”

Jack shrugged. “Okay.”

“Wait,” Henry said, “Dr. Craig, you mentioned that there were two things – what’s the second one?”

Dr. Craig brought out a pad, and on it was displayed an MRI scan of Jack’s brain.

“This is an image of Sheriff Carter’s pituitary gland. You will notice an extremely small tumor on it. Not even the size of the head of a pin. So there’s nothing to worry about - such tumors are fairly common with adults, and they’re almost always benign, just like this one. They pose no danger, except if the size induces mass effects – that means they become large enough that they affect the normal functioning of the brain. This one has a ways to go before that even becomes a factor, but we don’t expect this one to get big enough to affect her. The usual practice here is to just leave it alone.”

Henry shrugged. “I don’t get it - then everything’s good?”

Dr. Craig nodded. “That’s correct,” she said, “except that the scan from the sheriff’s physical last month didn’t show it, nor the one we took yesterday.”

“Oh...”

“Yes. That means the thing grew sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning.”

“That sounds bad,” Jack said.

“Not necessarily bad,” she said, “but it’s suspicious.”

“What do you think the next step should be,” Henry said.

“She doesn’t appear to be in danger so she can go about her business. But we want her to stay here tonight, and keep her under observation while she sleeps. Hopefully, if another metamorphosis happens, we can see it happen, and have scanners on her.”

“Is that okay, Jack?”

“Yes, it’s okay. Allison and the kids are with her folks anyway, so that’s fine with me.”

“All right. I’ll make the arrangements, then.” Dr. Craig stood and shook hands with Jack and Henry. “See you tonight, Ms. Carter.”

And with that, she left.

“Ms. Carter...” Jack mused.

“Well, you can’t blame her, you know, looking the way you do now.” Henry gestured at Jack.

“I guess.”

“You know, Jack, maybe it’s time to tell Allison.”

He held up a dainty hand. “Let’s hold up on that, Henry. At least until tomorrow? Hopefully, tomorrow, we’ll have some more information.”

Henry nodded. “I understand. Okay, Jack. Grace and I won’t say anything to Allison. But! Tomorrow, you’re gonna call her. Okay?”

Jack sighed in relief. “Okay.”

“But, what about that?” He pointed to his door and to the just-departed Dr. Craig. “You can’t be Ms. Jack Carter forever.”

“It’s not permanent! Or... at least we don’t know if it’s permanent yet. Let’s hold off on that until we know more.”

“Okay.”

The two best friends looked at each other.

“So!” Jack said suddenly. “I guess I should get to work now. Oh! I almost forgot – did Jo get anything from Dr. Connery?”

“No, nothing. Jo says Dr. Connery is clean. But she told me that she’s acting suspicious. Her responses were clean and there’s nothing in her records, or any other records. Jo’s currently chasing down some clues back in Connery’s old office in Area 51, but she’s not hopeful she’ll find anything. She’s assuming they’re dead ends, but she has to check them out just to eliminate things.”

“Oh.”

“As for the robot, I haven’t really had a chance to check it out but I’ve looked over the specs. Ross seems just a tad too big and overpowered for an all-purpose robot. But otherwise, the specs do seem to show that Ross is indeed an all-purpose robot.” Henry frowned.

“But?”

“But the robot’s too big and overpowered! It’s like... it’s like using a dump truck to go grocery shopping! Or using an oil tanker when all you need is a rowboat!”

“Give me a for-example.”

“Ross uses 50-millimeter armor plate for its shell. It’s armor plating, Jack! I doubt regular weapons can penetrate its hull. And its hydraulics allow it to lift about two tons per arm, and its power generator can keep it running for months! It doesn’t fit, Jack!”

“There’s got to be another ‘but’ there,” Jack said.

Henry nodded. “Yes. Be that as it may, at this point, all I have are just suspicions. Who knows? Maybe armor plating is necessary in Area 51. Maybe doors in Area 51 really do weigh two tons. I really need to check out the robot itself. I’ll do that tomorrow. How about you? What did you find out about the two cases of weapons?”

“Well, there’s nothing new there. The weapons were all derived from GD technology - just amped up by a whole hell of a lot by the Area 51 guys. But you were right. They’re designed to connect to receptacles in the robot’s hands.”

“Ahhh! That’s not in the specs!”

“The people from Section Five are actually asking what you want done with the weapons.”

“What was that you used to blow off the robot’s head?”

“That was a portable rail gun. Based off the Astraeus launch vehicle system designed by Holly Marten.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. But... too dangerous to have just lying around. Those weapons should be destroyed. Wait! I have a better idea.” He waved Jack away. “You go work. I’ll take care of it.”

Jack nodded and left his office.

- - - - -

Pilar spotted Jack as he crossed the rotunda. He was going to the parking lot. At the moment, he was wearing his badge on his light-blue sweater and his gun belt around his waist. It was a little too large for his waist so it hung low around his wider hips now. He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket since he seemed to be a little more sensitive to heat and cold, and in the temperature-controlled offices of GD, the jacket seemed too warm, so he carried it in his hand.

“Sheriff!” Pilar called but he was too preoccupied to hear.

“Sheriff Carter!” she called again. Finally, she yelled, “Jackie!”

Jack finally noticed and turned around.

“Hey, Pilar,” he said.

She came up to him, carrying a big cardboard box. When she was right in front of him, Jack saw that she was pissed off.

“What’s up?” he said mildly.

“What have you done, Jackie?” she exclaimed. “You go and morph again after I just went through the trouble of going through all the stores in this one-horse town to hand-pick you a wardrobe specifically intended to enhance your...” Pilar noticed Jack chuckling. “Why are you laughing at me, Jackie!”

“Well, one, there are exactly three clothing stores in town, and one of them is Mary’s, which is exactly eight doors down from my office, so I don’t know if that’s a hard thing to do. Two, you can always check the Internet and have stuff delivered directly, and three, I didn’t ‘morph’ intentionally – this just happened! Besides, why would I want to change myself a second time? If I could change myself, don’t you think I’d prefer to change back to the old me, or at the very least, to a guy?”

“Well! ... well... Oh, Jackie, I’m sorry!” She hugged him. “It’s just that, since you changed again, everything I bought would be the wrong sizes now... and the stores don’t have a return policy!”

Only Pilar, Jack thought. The fashion-obsessed girl is taking this far too seriously. And does it really matter? Why is it a problem if they’re not an exact fit? But...

“Well,” Jack said, “how about this - just give the clothes to me – who knows? I might change back. So don’t worry about them.” Despite Pilar’s worries, he knew they’ll all probably fit, or fit well enough. He’ll try them all out later. He reached out and got the box. Despite being big, the box wasn’t too heavy. It was just clothes, after all.

“But they would be the wrong fit,” Pilar continued.

“Well, you still have my credit card, right? Maybe you can buy me another set of clothes?”

The fashionista and shopper in her was smiling. She looked at him. “You sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure. You can get my new measurements over at Mary’s, or maybe at Medical – I was just given a checkup. Now, go! Go shop and buy more clothes.”

Pilar hugged him around the neck.

“Thanks, Jackie!” she said, and ran off.

“And the name is Jack!” he called. “... or Sheriff Carter...”

- - - - -

After he got to his jeep and left GD’s parking structure, he called Andy on the radio.

“Hey, Andy,” he said into the handset. He wasn’t too strict with the radio lingo.

“Hey, Boss,” Andy replied. “What did the doctors say?”

“Clean bill of health!” he said. “Well, aside from being turned into a girl and all... Anyway, I’m going on patrol and see you in the office in a few hours.”

“Well, since you’re out there already, Boss,” Andy said, “I just got a call. Seems we have a missing person.”

Jack sighed. “Don’t tell me – someone got lost in the woods again.”

“Not exactly. It’s at the EM shield facility on top of Mount Von Braun –“

“The EM building? Hasn’t that been closed up since the government took our shield generators?”

“It was, but a GD team has been out there for a month now, installing a new generator, and they’ve been doing tests the past week.”

“Okay. And someone got lost in the surrounding woods?”

“Well, not exactly... The whole building seemed to have disappeared, as well as anyone else that was inside.”

“Just another day in Eureka,” Jack muttered.

Andy agreed to meet up with him at the EM building, and Jack turned the jeep around and started driving towards Mount Von Braun. It wasn’t really a mountain but more like a hill, but people wanted to have their own mountain so...

As he drove, he thought of his encounter with Pilar. He couldn’t believe how girls take their fashion so seriously. But given it was Pilar, he guessed it was more understandable.

Mostly, though, he thought of how Pilar treated him. It was like she thought of him as her besty, like Zoe. But he supposed Pilar was missing Zoe, or something like that. He kind of liked it, actually, even though he found being called Jackie a bit unsettling.

He arrived at the place, but the building was indeed missing. There were about a dozen people standing around. He pulled up and got out of the car.

“Afternoon, folks!” he said.

One of the people walked up to him.

“So, who are you, lady?”

“Jane!” one of the others called, went to her and whispered into her ear.

“What?” Jane reacted. “That’s not Sheriff Carter!”

“I’m afraid it is,” he said.

“Really,” Jane said sarcastically, and pointedly looked him up and down.

“Yes! It’s me! Jack Carter!”

Just then, Andy pulled up.

“Ah, thank god! Andy!”

“Yeah, Boss?” Andy came over.

“Tell these people who I am.”

“Okay, Boss.” He turned to the crowd “Good afternoon, everyone! I’m Andy – deputy sheriff for the town of Eureka, as you know, and this is my boss, Sheriff Jack Carter. We’re here to investigate the disappearance of the GD EM facility.”

“Ahhh...” most of the people said. They had to believe Andy. “Wow,” said a few. “Ohmigod,” some said. As for Jane, she shook her head. “I still say that’s not the sheriff,” she said.

“But Andy said she is!” the guy beside her said.

“She’s too hot to be Carter,” she whispered to him.

“Yeah, she is!” he agreed. “Hey, sheriff!” He called. “Lookin’ good!” He made a thumbs-up sign and grinned.

Jack waved the guy to simmer down. “So who’s in charge here,” he asked the crowd.

“That would be Dr. Brosnan,” Jane replied.

“Okay – where’s Dr. Brosnan?”

“Ummm... he was inside the building when it disappeared.”

“Damn. How many were inside when it happened?”

“Almost everyone in the control room. That makes it six in there when the building disappeared.”

Jack nodded. He and Andy approached the area where the building used to be, and they both heard a kind of electric hum – the kind you hear near a transformer.

“Hear that?” Jack asked Andy.

“Yes, Boss. Sounds like a capacitor. There must be an enormous charge in that field. I suggest you don’t get any closer.”

“But we need to get closer...”

“That’s the problem, Sheriff,” Jane said. “The building’s still there except it’s invisible. But we can’t get close enough to rescue Dr. Brosnan and the others.”

Jack looked it over. He noticed a thick cable strung on a telephone pole. The cable looked like it was floating in the air and disappearing into the invisible building.

“So what’s that,” Jack asked and gestured at the cable.

“That’s the cable supplying power to the building,” Jane replied. “And...” Then she looked at Jack with a look of shock!

“Ohmigod! If we shut off the power, then we shut off the EM field. Why didn’t we think of that! Sheriff, you’re a genius!” Jane hugged Jack.

“But then...” She suddenly thought of something. “If there’s no incoming current but the EM equipment wasn’t properly powered off, feedback might travel back through the cable. That’d be real bad.”

“Ahhh!” Jack said, “But what if we disconnect the cable instead?”

Jane put her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah? That’s a high-tension power cable, with a zillion volts under a thousand amps flowing through it. How do you propose to do that, Miss Sheriff Jackie Carter?”

’Jackie’ again, he thought. He turned to Andy. “Can you find me an axe, Andy?”

“Be right back,” Andy said and went to look for one.

“What do you plan on doing?” Jane asked.

“We’re in the forest, right? And forests are full of trees. And trees sometimes fall down, right? What if one of them falls on that power cable?”

Jane looked at him in amazement. “You’re a genius,” she said again.

“Well,” he said, superciliously looking at his nails, “what can I say? I am a genius.”

“It’s funny, but you didn’t used to look like a genius.”

“How do I look now?”

“You look familiar, actually.” She thought a bit. “You look very similar to Dr. Jessica Hartley from Section Three.”

He frowned. “I do? I mean, do I look exactly like her?”

“Not exactly. Your features are very similar, but no one would mix you two up. Plus, you’re like six inches taller. And your voice is totally different.”

Andy came back. “I found an axe, Boss,” he said, “but I found this chainsaw. This might work better, so I got it instead.” He handed it over. “They were in the ranger’s box nailed to that tree over there.”

“Good. Now get everyone to move further back.”

Jack looked around for a likely tree, and found a really thick and tall one that was right at the tree line.

“What do you think?” he asked Andy when he got back.

“Hmmm,” Andy said, as he looked the tree up and down, and then at the electric pole and power cable. Jack imagined hearing the gears turn as Andy undoubtedly started computing angles and such.

“Excellent choice, Boss,” Andy said after a moment, “and your cut should be here and here.” He gestured against the trunk of the tree.

Jack sighed. “Thanks, Andy,” he said, “but I know just where to cut.”

He bent down and started setting up for his cut, and then he heard someone wolf-whistle.

He straightened up quickly and turned to the crowd several meters away. Dammit, he thought.

“Move back some more,” he said and gestured the crowd to move further back, and he moved to the left side of the tree instead, to take his backside out of their line of sight.

“Awww,” the men groaned.

“Oh, shut up,” he said. “Can you do me a favor and get me my jacket? It’s in the jeep.”

“Sure thing, sheriff.”

Jack revved up the chainsaw and started making his cut. He didn’t think it would be hard, especially with a chainsaw, but it wasn’t easy at all. The saw needed strong and steady pressure, and he had less control. But Andy said he was doing fine.

After he finished cutting out a wedge, the back of the cut started creaking and popping.

“Run!” Jack cried, and ran for where the others were standing and Andy followed. Jack ran in the comical way he usually does.

“Now,” the guy who made the comment earlier said, “if you weren’t convinced that girl is Sheriff Carter,” he gestured at him now, “that run should convince you.” The rest nodded. Of course, Jack’s new figure made the run less like Rowan Atkinson in Mr. Bean and more like Pamela Anderson in Baywatch, so the guys’ expressions were more like slack jaws instead of grins.

Jack and Andy got to the others and watched as the big tree slowly creak and fall down.

As planned, the big tree crashed down on target, missing the telephone pole and hitting the cable. With an explosion and a shower of sparks, the cable was disconnected and power to the invisible building was cut off.

But, instead of the building becoming suddenly visible, it only became so in parts and patches, but the parts that were visible kept on moving.

“What’s happening?” Jack asked.

“I didn’t think of this!” Jane exclaimed. “The EM effect takes a while to go away, depending on how long the various materials inside take to give up their individual fields.”

“So we just wait for it to dissipate?”

“Well... I don’t know. Anything in there with the right kinds of metal might retain their fields longer, and the longer they do, the hotter they will get.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning kaboom.” She gestured an explosion with her hands.

“A big kaboom?”

“Probably not, but definitely many kabooms. Both small and medium-sized kabooms. And lots of electrical arcs. Those explosions have been happening for a while now, but the people inside couldn’t get out because of the EM field.”

“Dammit! Then we need to get in there and get those people out. Andy!”

The two of them rushed to the partially visible building.

“Where are the doors?” Jack asked, accepting his jacket from Andy and putting it on. He would definitely need it – his sweater wouldn’t be much protection against flying shrapnel.

“There!” Andy exclaimed as he saw the main doors partly revealed, and they rushed to it.

The two of them fetched up against the invisible wall near the doorway, and Jack felt around and touched the metal doorframe. An electric arc sparked from the metal doorway to Jack’s hand.

“Ow!” He cried, and brought his fingers to his mouth. “That stings!” he said.

“Boss,” Andy said, “I don’t know if I can go in there. The arcing static electricity will burn out my electronics...”

“No problem. You stay here and I’ll herd the others to you.”

“All right, Boss.”

Jack grabbed the door handle, grimaced against the short shock, and pushed the door in. That kept the door open and allowed Andy to check on him.

“Anyone here? Hello! It’s Sheriff Carter! We’ve cut the power off so you can get out now!”

“Sheriff Carter?” someone replied in confusion.

“I know, I know!” he said. “Forget the voice and just listen to what I’m saying. The power is off now so everyone out! Follow my voice, everyone out!”

About four people came out and went to him.

“Sheriff?” one of them asked.

“Yes, it’s me.” He pointed to the open door where Andy was waiting. “Go to the door, get out now!” Somewhere inside, there were several small, new explosions. “Now!”

“Sheriff!” one of them said, “Mikey’s still with Dr. Brosnan – he got knocked out! Someone has to go back for them!” She pointed to one of the offices inside.

“I’ll take care of them – you guys go to Andy.”

Jack crouched down and started making for that office. Several explosions rang out, and he ducked the flying debris.

In a minute he was in the control room, and he saw Mike shielding someone lying on the floor from sparks and flying debris.

“Mike!” he said. “Get out of here. I’ll take care of Dr. Brosnan.”

“Who’re you?” he said.

“I’m Sheriff Carter.”

“But...”

“This is getting pretty old,” he said. “Yes! I am Jack Carter. Now, go! I’ll take care of Dr. Brosnan.”

Mike shrugged and ran out.

Jack saw a big gash on the guy’s forehead, but someone expertly dressed it. He checked for a pulse and it was strong though slow.

Something exploded above him and showered them with sparks and soot. Jack covered the scientist with his body, but it wasn’t anything dangerous. All it did was cover Jack with dirt, dust and ash.

He took his jacket off and shook out the soot but as more explosions started, he hurried and tried to lift the scientist, but he found that he didn’t have the same upper body strength as before.

“Dammit!” Jack muttered in frustration. He looked around and saw a dust cover for some piece of equipment.

As Jack flipped the sheet off the device, a massive shock of static electricity hit him, making him fall to the ground.

“Ow! Goddammit!” At least the sheet had discharged all of its static.

More explosions went off around him as he laid the tarp on the floor and rolled Dr. Brosnan on it. This allowed him to drag the unconscious man out of the control room using the sheet, and towards the main doors.

More and more pieces of equipment started to explode and Jack had to practically crawl. At the boundary of the main doorway, Andy was finally able to reach in and helped Jack drag Dr. Brosnan out.

“So, is everyone finally out, Sheriff?” Andy asked.

“Yes,” Jack said, finally standing up. A couple of the people came over and carried Dr. Brosnan over to an ambulance.

“So, what now?” Jack said.

Jane came over. “Nothing anymore. We just need for all the remnants of the field to dissipate.”

“Ahhh, good. How about the explosions?”

“Well, as soon as the field is gone, the thermal levels should dissipate and there would be no more explosions. We can then go in there and discharge the remaining static electricity.”

“Good.”

But, in the meantime, we just have to let nature take its course.”

“All right. Then let’s get away from the building.”

At that moment, there were several new explosions, and more smoke billowed out of the open doors. A piece of equipment that looked like a metal shoebox hit Jack’s back and there was the sound of a loud crack of electrical discharge.

“Owww!” Jack said and shook his head. “That was the biggest charge so far! Come on, let’s get away from the building.” Then he saw people staring at him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know – the soot and the dirt.”

“It’s not that, Sheriff,” Jane said. “It’s...” she pointed at his face.

“What!”

“Sheriff,” Andy said, “it’s happened again.”

Jack’s hands went to his face. “Oh, no!”

- - - - -

Jack did, indeed, turn into another girl. The difference now was that people saw it happen.

He sat in his jeep and looked into a hand mirror one of the scientists lent him. As far as he can tell, he was still six-one, and his voice was still the same low and sultry voice that he had the first time. As for other things - everything else was different.

She was yet another blonde, but it was a different darker shade and length, and her face was totally different. Her build was also different – she was slimmer now and seemed longer-limbed (but maybe that’s just an impression because of her slimmer build). This’ll piss off Pilar for sure.

Her eyes were now blue, as opposed to the light brown before and the green from yesterday. And she didn’t know what to do.

She used her blue sweater to wipe her sooty face and neck, which made Jane and all the others cringe. He didn’t understand – the sweater was all dirty already. But he heard comments like, “isn’t that cashmere,” or “she can’t wear that poor sweater anymore.”

So he checked and he found the still-moist towel in his bag from this morning. He also grabbed the last of the unused clothes Pilar first bought, and went to the back of one of the trees to change.

After he shook most of the crap from his hair and wiped his face, neck and arms with the towel, he took off the sweater, leggings and underwear, he changed into what he got – which turned out to be a sports bra and panties, white shorts and a black middy sweater with three-fourths sleeves. Guess he’ll wait until he gets back home for a shower. Or GD, since Henry, Grace, and the rest of Section Nine insisted that he come in for another checkup. Andy had already squared it with Sarah and Jack already promised Henry so it was all set.

After three changes, though, he was starting to feel this might not be a temporary situation anymore. What if he couldn’t get back to normal?

He told Andy to supervise everything, and to tell Henry he’ll be in after a couple of hours. He just needed some time alone to think.

Andy gave him a thumbs-up and stayed to help supervise the ... “de-staticking” of the building.

Jack decided to drive into town but, after seeing the Archimedes monument-marker, it reminded him of when things were still normal. He looked at the brass Archimedes in his brass bathtub, and remembered everything since he and his daughter Zoe first arrived in Eureka. He smiled - it wasn’t perfect but, if he was being honest, he knew he wouldn’t change a single minute of the past nine or ten years.

In fact, he was all set to continue this life of his in Eureka, especially with his new family - Allison, Kevin, Jenna, baby Kim, and their extended family – Allison’s brother Marcus, Allison’ folks, his sister Lexi and her family, and his ex-wife Abby.

Then, of course, there’s his best friend Henry and his wife Grace, his ex-partner, ex-deputy and current friend Jo Lupo, and all the other people in his life. He even included Sarah in it.

But, in the back of his mind, would his life still be his life if he never gets back to himself? What about Allison?

Henry and the Section Nine people were doing their best, but if Allison or Zoe were here, they’d probably be able to figure it out in half the time. But then how can he face his family looking like this?

And what if there was no way back? What would he do? Would he and Allison have to break up? What would happen to the kids? Even just the possibility of it made him shudder in worry.

Eventually, he found himself at the town border. He pulled over at the town limits sign.

He sighed and stepped out.

“Hi, Allison?” he said into his tiny phone. “It’s Jack. Yeah – Jack. No kidding, it really is me. You can call Henry to verify, but before you do, let me tell you what happened..."

to be continued in Episode 3: “Tests, Tests, and More Tests” Jan. 8, Tuesday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

But, despite Jack’s problems, he was still Eureka’s sheriff. So he decided to go back to work while Henry tried to figure out how to fix him. And after he and Deputy Andy finished dealing with the latest emergency, Jack changed yet again.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

What happened at Mount Von Braun and the EM facility had quickly made the rounds (to be sure, their town was not like any other, but when it came to gossip, Eureka was very much like any American small town: gossip spreads like wildfire in Eureka just like in any rural community).

So most of the people in Global Dynamics knew about Jack by the following morning, and found a reason to pass by Medical, with excuses like headaches or dizziness, or (the most memorable one) a hangnail, and see a doctor. And, “by accident,” they just happened to peek into Jack’s room, and said hi.

Just another day in Eureka.

Dr. Craig had again traced who Jack had turned into – it was Taylor Sweets, daughter of Dr. Fergus Sweets from Section Twenty-Three. Taylor had just started in Cambridge – she was going for a degree in astronomy. Which was just as well – it would have been awkward if Jack were to meet her looking like this.

Dr. Sweets said, though Jack looked remarkably like his daughter, he clearly wasn’t her. Jack’s new face didn’t look exactly like hers, he didn’t sound anything like her, and since Taylor was five-ten, he was at least three inches taller.

“Which is good,” Jack said to Dr. Sweets. “It already feels pretty awkward right now. Imagine if I really was Taylor’s identical twin.”

Dr. Sweets nodded and shook Jack’s hand.

“True,” he said. “Anyway, good luck Jackie... I mean, Sheriff Carter.” He scurried away.

That bothered him – most of the people who passed by called him Sheriff, but those whom he knew personally didn’t call him Jack, but called him Jackie instead.

Henry came in.

“So, no identical cloning,” Jack said to Henry.

“So far,” Henry replied. “But we did discover something new – something that was overlooked.” He held up a card.

“What’s that?” Jack said. “Fingerprints?”

“Your new fingerprints,” Henry answered. “And look at these.” He held up another card.

“Who’s prints are those?” he asked.

“Yours, too, from your employee file.”

“Huh? Why do –“

“Your fingerprints haven’t changed!”

“Oh... So what? I’m still six-one, I have the same fingerprints, and I have the same girly voice I got the first time I changed, but everything else is different. So?”

“Dr. Craig?” Henry called to the scientist standing nearby.

“Sheriff Carter,” Dr. Craig, the current person in charge of Section Nine said, “it seems Dr. Barrows’ device was defective. The device was supposed to create clones of people’s organs, not their entire bodies. But, also, the cloning was supposed to be exact, but it turns out it’s not.

“Given your height is still your old height, and your fingerprints are exactly like your old prints, it seems you are now a mix of your DNA donor and you.”

“I thought we knew that already.”

“It was a theory,” she said, “and it remained unconfirmed until we got your fingerprints.”

“I don’t get it – why don’t you just check my current DNA? Can’t you...”

Dr. Craig sighed. “Well, the thing is, your new DNA has no similarity to your old DNA nor the other thirty donor DNAs – none at all.”

“So...”

“So that means... well... well that means... well, I don't know what that means.” She held up a sheet with colored horizontal lines – it was a printout of Jack’s DNA code.

“Can’t we assume, Dr. Craig,” Henry said, “that this is a mix of the genetic maps of all the DNA donors and Jack’s DNA?”

“The thing is, Dr. Deacon, that’s not an easy thing to confirm. Combining DNA code without a map to begin with, and still produce a viable, live specimen is next to impossible. Jackie should be dead by now, or at least mutated into something totally unrecognizable. But as you see,“ - she gestured to Jack – “Jackie is totally healthy and normal.”

Jack and Henry looked at each other.

“Here’s another thing,” Dr. Craig said, “Jackie’s DNA had not changed despite changing into three different women, and her blood type hasn’t as well.”

“What!” Henry said. “How come you weren’t able to tell that right away?”

“Well, the blood type, perhaps – the blood type is exactly the same as Jack’s old blood type – O-negative. But since there are only four blood types, we weren’t prepared to conclude anything from that, except that it could just be a coincidence.

“As to the DNA – we have been comparing the entire DNA chain from all three of Jackie’s transformations to make sure it’s one hundred percent identical. And that took time.”

Henry nodded resignedly. “You’re right, Dr. Craig. My apologies.”

“So, now what?” Jack said.

“Now, you let others take a look at the data,” Allison said.

“Allison!” Jack said.

Allison came and, after a moment’s hesitation, have him a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Jack said.

“You should have called me earlier,” she replied. “I’d have come back sooner.”

“I’m sorry, Allison,” he said, “it’s just...”

“I understand. Kevin and the girls are back at the house, but I’m here now.” She turned to Henry. “Hey, Henry.”

“Hey, Allison.” He gave her a hug.

“Has Grace made any progress on this... whatever it is?”

“I’ll call her.”

Soon, Grace had come over, with Zane Donovan in tow.

“What’re you doing here, Donovan?” Allison said.

“I’ve been asked by Dr. Craig to help to try and figure out Dr. Barrows’ device.” He was a bit dirty – obviously, he’d been going through the debris from Section Nine.

“And?”

He shrugged. “Sorry, Allison – I couldn’t get anything out of that pile of junk.”

“That’s too bad,” She said. “Grace?”

“I’ve done my best, Allison, but I have to agree with Dr. Craig’s conclusions.” She handed Allison a pad, and Allison paged through the device.

“How about the scans in Jack’s pituitary gland?” She showed Grace and Henry the page she was looking at, and Henry put it up on a bigger screen.

“Dr. Craig was right again.” Grace zoomed in and pointed at the little structures on the surface of the pituitary glands.

“Since the scans from yesterday and the day before, they haven’t grown. But she did get this.” She put up a chart. “this is a scan of Jackie’s,“ - Jack cleared his throat – “sorry! I mean Jack’s pituitary. They picked up a kind of ionizing mutagenic radiation coming from it.”

“Significant levels?”

“Not at all. It’s at 0.15 microseiverts per hour. Not even enough to cause mild sunburn. Plus it’s going down.”

“Conclusion?”

“I think Jackie... Sorry! I mean Jack – I think Jack was zapped with enough static electricity yesterday to trigger another morph. Without it, Jack will need to accumulate enough energy on his own before another morph can happen.”

“And then his DNA was changed again.”

“Well, no. Jack’s DNA doesn’t change. I think his DNA has all thirty of the DNA donors in it, and all that his pituitary does is to cause him to... externalize certain physical features according to the DNA that he has absorbed – one DNA map for each morph.”

“So you mean Jack’s not turning into different people? That these are all just parts of Jack’s new physical self?”

“I think so.”

“Wow,” Donovan commented. “Carter has a superpower! He can morph into a hottie at will.”

Jack impatiently waved him away. “So, what are you saying, Grace,” Jack asked.

“What I’m saying, Jack, is that your changes aren’t changes in your present genetics or DNA. These are all just part of the same new DNA.”

“Can the changes be controlled, at least?”

“I guess so,” Grace said, “but it’ll require a lot of practice.”

“Practice?”

“Yes.”

“God. I have to go through more of these morphs just to get a handle on it?” Jack looked depressed at the idea.

“How about reversing it?” Allison asked Henry.

“Sorry, Allison, no one knows if that’s possible, yet.”

Allison sighed and reached for Jack’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Jack. But maybe you can morph back into your old self, too.” She looked at Grace. “That’s possible, too, right?”

“I guess so. Jack’s original DNA is definitely in there.”

“Hear that, Jack?”

“Yeah...”

Allison gave him a hug. “It’ll be all right. I’ll fix it. I promise.”

He hugged her back hard. “Thanks...”

- - - - -

He accidentally met up with Pilar again. And again, Pilar wasn’t happy. Again, Jack gave her his new measurements, and she took a deep breath and just nodded and agreed to get him another set of clothes.

“You know, of course,” she said, “that the stuff I’m getting you are specifically for your new look. They’re optimized for that one specific look. It’s not as if you can mix and match them and still match you!”

“’Looks,’ huh?”

“You know what I mean! But... the new you is looking good, by the way,” Pilar said looking at his attire, “but... who picked that combination?”

“I just picked the stuff from the box you gave me that fit.” Jack looked down at himself. “I hope it’s not too bad.” He was wearing a pair of casual blue canvas shoes with brown laces, kelly-green leggings, and a beige, long-sleeved, slim-fit cable knit sweater, and just kept his now strawberry blonde, shoulder-length hair loose.

“Not bad at all,” Pilar grinned. Jackie looks pretty chic, actually, she thought. Looks like she doesn’t need much help. “So,” Pilar said, “What do I do with this?” She held out the new box of clothes in her arms.

“Pilar, I think you’re exaggerating. I’ve found lots of stuff in the previous box that fit me.”

“You’re the same height, and still slim, so, unless you turn grossly overweight, you’ll probably find something in the stuff I got you that would fit, more or less. And you’ve been a blonde all three times, so that helps.”

“What’s being blonde got to do with clothes sizes?”

“Nothing! It’s just that what I picked would go well with your look, ‘coz I picked them for a blonde.”

“You really know clothes,” he observed.

“Well, duh! I am trying to get a degree in fashion after all!” She proffered the new box of clothes. “So... more clothes?”

“Gimme that! And... on the off-chance of me needing more clothes, can you get me another set?”

“Jackie, if you’re trying to build up a wardrobe, the stuff I’ve been getting you is pretty casual. Nothing fancy or office-y. They’re good for everyday, for weekends, for around the house, or just jogging or going to the gym, or for going to the market...”

“Got it! Can you still get me some more?”

“Jackie, you keep on changing –“

“It’s Jack, okay? And how about this – go to Section Nine, look for Dr. Craig and tell her that she should give you the details of my DNA donors. Explain to her that you’re trying to get me new clothes that fit, and that you need pictures and measurements.” Jack then explained Pilar his situation.

“That’s pretty cool, Jackie! Pretty soon, you can pick and choose who you turn into?”

“It’s Jack! Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to control it. Anyway, can you get clothes that’ll fit most of my... ‘looks’ as you call them?”

“Well, what would you call them?”

“Dr. Craig and Grace call my changing a ‘morphing,’ so –“

“So you want to be the Power Rangers.” Pilar giggled.

“No. But maybe we can call my changes my ‘morphs.’”

She grinned. “Cool. So, here you go.” She handed the box to Jack, gave him a hug and skipped on to Section Nine. “I’ll get you more clothes.”

“That kid is too cheerful,” Jack chuckled and proceeded to his jeep with the new box, and resolved to try to get back to work.

He started driving to his office, and when he was near, he saw Mary’s Uniforms and Fashions. He decided to pass by there first.

He pulled over in front of the store. Pinning his badge on his white sweater and putting on his gun belt, he stepped out and went into the shop.

The door chime tinkled and Mary came out.

“Yes, miss, may I help you?” she said, and then saw his gun belt and badge. “Oh, no! Sheriff Carter! You changed again!”

Jack nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

“Oh, darn. And we just finished your new uniforms, too.”

“Would they fit me?”

She looked him up and down and noted the even slimmer build. “Probably not, I’m afraid.” She asked one of her staff to bring a portable biometric scanner and did another measurement scan.

“I remember when people used to use a tape measure...” Jack grinned, which faded when he saw Mary’s look.

“All right,” Mary said and looked his new measurements over. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, your measurements don’t match at all.” She showed him the screen. He dutifully looked at the numbers. They didn’t really mean anything to him but he nodded nevertheless as if they did.

“But it’s not that far off?” he asked hopefully.

“Are you kidding?” Mary said. “You'll need a belt not just to hold your gun and handcuffs, but to hold up your new pants as well!”

“Okay. How about the first set you made? No?” He sighed. “Guess you have to make up another set, then.” He accepted the new ones.

“I have to tell you, though,” Mary said, “we’re running out of material.”

“Is it that difficult to get khaki?”

Mary gave him a look. “Well it wouldn’t be, if... ‘khaki’ weren’t made from high-tech polymers that make it fire resistant as well as bullet resistant!”

“Ahhh... sorry.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll figure something out. But, Sheriff, we can’t keep on doing this. How many more of these changes will you be going through?”

“Well... the doctors say twenty-seven more?” Jack shrugged.

Twenty-seven more!” her staff echoed him.

“Hold on, hold on!” Mary said to her people. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, we know you’re not doing this deliberately. Like I said, we’ll figure something else. But...”

She looked at Jack. “Twenty-seven? Really?”

Jack sighed.

- - - - -

Jack got to the office and found Andy doing some paperwork. He dropped a plastic bag full of the clothes he’d been wearing. The blue sweater from yesterday was particularly dirty.

“Hey, Andy,” Jack said. He noted Andy’s look. “Sorry – laundry. I was hoping to drop them off at Callie’s”

“Hello, Boss,” Andy replied. “You’ve changed again. Are you okay?”

“I guess. Sorry about being late, by the way. Allison just arrived and insisted on doing some tests. We found out some new things, though...”

“Such as?”

Jack told him all about it.

In Andy’s electronic brain, he noted down everything that his “boss” said, filing away the information, cross-referencing them with notations and other footnotes, like this information came from Dr. Craig, or this information came from Doctor Deacon while this came from Dr. Blake, that Zane Donovan said Dr. Barrows’ device was totally useless, and that Pilar Reed said she will get the sheriff more clothes, and so on and so forth.

His AI brain and data subsystems were second to none, and he suspected that defective “Ross” robot that got the sheriff in this predicament in the first place doesn’t even come close. Cyberneticists would probably have said that his mimicry of the human emotion of pride was excellent, but the truth was closer to it being genuine instead of an imitation, as was all of his other “emotions.”

Like his sense of friendship and loyalty for his boss, and his unshakeable trust in the man, or the sense of “love” he had for the AI, Sarah, the operating system of Sheriff Carter’s smarthouse.

In fact, this sense of friendship and belonging extended to many people in Eureka which he had labeled his “friends,” and he knew, with a one hundred percent probability that they thought of him in the same way.

Roboticists and cyberneticists will probably say that this was just his AI functioning as designed, as a way for his system to interpret information that best serves his mission: “to be an effective deputy to the town’s sheriff and, by doing so, insure the safety of Eureka’s residents and assets.”

In any case, whatever the electronic programming or logical rationalizations as to why he “felt” this way, the fact was that he did. And he will do his best, as always, to follow his programming.

“That’s amazing, Boss,” Andy said as Jack finished his story.

“Yeah. Scary, too,” Jack said.

“Don’t worry, Boss I’ll be here for you, no matter what.”

“I know you will, Andy. I appreciate it. Thanks.” And Jack realized that he really did mean that. Andy was his friend, artificial or otherwise. Of course, Jack meant it.

“Lemme finish up some reports and we can go on patrol.” He sat down and Andy put the few days’ paperwork that had accumulated in front of him.

Andy had done everything already and all that was left was the stuff that Jack had to sign for. Mostly requisitions and other similar things.

“While you do that, let me get this to Ms. Curie,” Andy said.

“What?”

“Your dirty clothes – I’m going to bring it by Callie Curie at the dry cleaners’?”

“Ah, okay. Thanks, Andy. Oh, wait!” He hurriedly went to the plastic bag and grabbed his used underwear. “Okay,” he said, hiding the panties behind his back. “I’m good, now. Go ahead.”

Andy looked at him quizzically, but picked up the bag without any further comment.

Andy also took Jack’s leather jacket from the coat rack and promised he’d wait for the jacket before coming back. All it needed was a quick sponge.

After a minute, Jack sighed and was finally left alone in the office.

He wondered if he should have gotten the bras as well - he didn’t know if girls classed bras with underpants (he wondered if he should he say “underpants”), but it was too late now.

He sighed again and started on the paperwork.

As he worked, Jack thought about his current situation. Allison was here now, and it had changed things to something more hopeful. He had faith now that things will be back to normal, simply because Allison was back. When that will be, no one knew, but it’ll happen sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

He missed the kids, and it’ll be nice to see them after work. But then he wondered how they would react. He hoped they’d be okay with the new Jack, or at least give him a chance.

Unlike last night, he found he was hardly hungry this morning, but yesterday, it was like he couldn’t stop himself. Grace said it was his body replenishing his energy and his mass, which were undoubtedly used up when he morphed. But after the big meal, he was stable again. Actually, he hasn’t had to go to the bathroom, except to pee, and he found that he only peed a little every time now.

Grace said that seemed logical, and that he should expect more of that while he kept on morphing. Jack crossed his fingers that, if he can’t get back to normal, at least he hoped he could control when he morphed.

When he was almost done with the paperwork, his desk phone rang.

“Sheriff’s office,” he said after he picked it up.

“Can I talk to Sheriff Carter,” the person on the other end said.

“Yes, this is Sheriff Carter,” he replied.

“You can’t be Sheriff Carter,” the man said, “you’re – oooh!”

Jack sighed. “I guess you heard.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said and chuckled.

“So what can I do for you?”

“I’m Dr. Moore here at the greenhouse near Euclid Avenue. You know – the one just before you get to Lake Archimedes.”

“Yes, I know the place. What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, there have been several explosions here since this morning. It’s bothering our plants.”

“What?”

- - - - -

Jack and Andy arrived at the greenhouse fairly quickly. They went in separate cars just in case they’d need both vehicles.

Since Jack knew he’d be tramping around in the forest, he decided to change the blue canvas shoes he was wearing for the boots from yesterday. They were loose this time, so he put on a couple of thick tube socks from the spare stuff he kept in the office.

Though they weren’t exactly combat boots, they were close enough. He wiggled his toes in the loose front part of the boots, but the socks seemed to keep them comfortably tight.

He stepped out of his jeep.

“Hello!” Someone called and came over.

Jack looked down at his still-pristine beige cable knit sweater. Aside from being a touch too formfitting, he didn’t want it dirtied almost immediately. He reached into the jeep and got his leather jacket.

“Dr. Moore, I presume?” he said as he slipped on his jacket.

“You presume correctly. And I presume you are the new Sheriff Carter.” He looked to the other person there. “And Deputy Andy, of course.”

“Good morning, Dr. Moore,” Andy said.

“I wouldn’t know about ‘new,’ Dr. Moore,” Jack said. “I’m still the same old Jack Carter, although, ummm, I’m in new and sexy togs.”

“Sexy. I’ll say,” Dr. Moore winked.

Jack sighed. “Dr. Moore, you know, of course that there are harassment laws...”

Dr. Moore laughed. “Sorry! Just a joke. You and Deputy Andy better come with me. We’ll be safer inside.”

“In your greenhouse? What about glass and...”

“Well, not exactly glass. More like transparent aluminum.”

“Transparent what?”

“Just come inside and we can talk about it.”

Jack and Andy followed him into the greenhouse.

“Now, Doctor,” Jack said, “what can we help you with?”

“Starting early this morning, we’ve been getting explosions and we’re starting to get worried.”

“Where?”

Dr. Moore pointed to the field just outside. “It’s a little troubling,” he said. “We just finished planting our new crop last week, and just as we were about to start harvesting today, this had to happen.”

“What kind of plants are they?”

“It’s a new species of plant artificially crossbred from linum usitatissimum, glycine max, brassica napus and pisum sativum. We call them Super Peas.”

“Okay...?”

“They’re bred to produce high concentrations of starch, protein and vegetable oil, making them ideal for the production of biofuels, oxygen, hydrogen and food, all in one plant.”

He took what looked like a pea pod from his lab coat pocket and handed it to Jack. To Jack, it looked exactly like an unsplit pea pod except it was about the size of a gourd.

“With it,” Dr. Moore explained, “we can clean the air, make more earth-friendly fuels, and feed the hungry.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Like I said, from super peas, we can produce biofuels, vegetable oil, vegetable protein, sugars, starches, and lots and lots of oxygen and clean-burning hydrogen. Super peas will save the world!”

“That’s amazing Doctor.”

“Yes. But how can we save the world when that,” he pointed out to the field, “keeps on happening?”

And just then, another explosion threw a big gout of fire and dirt into the air.

“Andy? What do you think?”

“Maybe Dr. Moore’s people disturbed some war-era landmines. Remember that incident with Ms Claudia Donovan and Dr. Fargo?”

“I don’t recall any minefields in this area. Do you?”

There was another explosion, this one quite near, and the greenhouse was showered with dirt.

“My records show that this area was never used as a minefield, whether in World War 2, pre-Eureka or post-Eureka.”

“Maybe there just weren’t any records kept.”

Another explosion.

“Perhaps.”

“What we need is to get a look at one of those mines, and find out what they are. Do we have metal detectors?”

“Sorry, Boss,” Andy said, “my metal detectors and scanners aren’t installed. I have purely optical sensors at the moment.”

“We have metal detectors,” Dr. Moore said. He went to the back of the greenhouse and came back with devices that looked like very large garbage can lids stuck on the end of metal poles the length of broom handles.

“Those are ginormous metal detectors,” Jack commented.

“Yes,” Dr. Moore smiled.

“Andy?”

Andy got one of them and handed the other to Jack.

Jack took it, and then took a big breath. “Let’s go.”

“But, Sheriff,” Dr. Moore said, stopping him, “why not just let the mines go off until they’re all gone?”

“That’s more like Plan B, Dr. Moore,” Jack said. “What we need to do is to find out what they are and stop them from going off because they’re dangerous, and also, that will show us how to handle them in case we find more of them in the future. And besides, what about your super peas?”

“But Sheriff, the explosions - they’re dangerous!”

Jack shrugged. “It’s what we do, Dr. Moore. Let’s go, Andy.”

“Good luck! And be careful!”

Jack found that a little unusual. Aside from Allison and his friends, the townspeople rarely wished him good luck or told him to be careful. Was it because he was a girl now?

“We have to stay five meters apart, Boss,” Andy said, “in case one of us steps on something.”

“Good tip. And remember where you stepped before, so that you know where to go if we have to run back.”

“Right, Boss.”

They started going out from the greenhouse, making steady circular circuits around it. After a couple of hours, they were able to do four circuits, and were now about fifty meters from the greenhouse. Thankfully, they hadn’t discovered anything, and there were no new explosions.

Jack stopped and straightened up.

“This is hard work,” he commented to no one in particular, and then waved to his deputy several meters away.

“Hey, Andy!” he called (they had decided on not using their radios, on the off-chance that might trigger the mines).

“Yes, Boss?” he called back.

“This isn’t working. We’ve been doing this for hours now, and we haven’t found anything yet.”

“Wait, something’s happening... Boss, run!”

Jack didn’t ask any questions and just started running back to the greenhouse. He saw from the corner of his eye Andy doing likewise.

“Duck and cover!” Andy cried, and they both dived to the ground. At that moment, there were several explosions, and the two of them stayed crouched as they crossed the last few meters to the greenhouse. Dr. Moore stayed by the door waving them in, and as soon as they stumbled in, Dr. Moore closed the door, and then a whole string of explosions threw up lots of earth and rock, and a decent sized one, like a small boulder, hit the roof. The glass didn’t crack... probably because it wasn’t glass.

“Jesus!” Jack said.

Dr. Moore looked towards the explosions. “It must have been us,” he said. “You’re probably right - our planting might have disturbed some mines.”

“Why do you think that,” Jack said.

Dr. Moore pointed to the still-exploding field. “That’s one of the areas where we planted our super peas,” he said.

“What did you see, Andy?” Jack asked his deputy.

“I basically didn’t see anything, boss, except a slight disturbance in the soil, and then a slight whistling sound.”

“What?”

“Like something was peeking out of the ground. And then I detected a strong hydrogen line in my spectrometer.”

“Hydrogen...” Jack thought a bit and turned to Dr. Moore.

“I think I know what’s been happening out there,” he said.

“You do?” Dr. Moore asked.

“Yes. It’s your super peas.”

“What!”

“I think the pea pods split when they get too full of gas, and at that point, they release hydrogen and oxygen, and stray static or whatever just make them explode.”

“Ohmigod! How did we allow that to get past us?”

At that moment, another string of explosions rocked the greenhouse.

“You’re saying, Boss, that the thing peeking out was a pea pod?” Andy said.

“Yes, like a bean sprout. So, Doctor, now that we know what we’re up against, what can we do about it?”

Dr. Moore shrugged. “I don’t know what we can do. It’s not as if we can dig up the pods before they split. And if they’re about to split because of the gas, it’ll be downright dangerous to be near them.”

Jack thought it over. He knew he had a knack for thinking out of the box that the big brains can’t really do as well as he could. Henry, Allison and everyone else have actually learned to rely on him for that. In fact, he now had a reputation for it.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, doing his best to “do a Jack Carter,” as Henry calls his out-of-the-box moments, “it’s the high levels of hydrogen that make things dangerous, right?”

“Right.”

“Is there any way to thin it out?”

“But the pea pods were meant to make lots of hydrogen and oxygen!”

“I know, but what if you had lots of air flowing over the plants to disperse the hydrogen?”

“Sheriff, more oxygen will just make things more dangerous.”

“What if it’s something else? What if it’s not even plain air? Is there some gas that doesn’t burn that we can pump over the plants?”

Dr. Moore was looking at Jack with wide, amazed eyes. “That’s genius!” he commented.

If Andy were more predisposed to it, he would have laughed and commented that Dr. Moore has never seen the sheriff do a Jack Carter. As it is, Andy rated it as deserving a big grin. He triggered his facial actuators to make him smile big.

“So,” Jack said, “is there something like that?”

“Nitrogen would be best,” Dr. Moore said. “We have some, but I don’t think we have enough.”

“Let’s use whatever you have.”

“Sheriff...”

“Just let it out slowly, enough that there’d be a thin layer on the ground – just enough to stop an explosion.”

Dr. Moore looked at Jack with the same look. “I think we can do something like that.”

He smiled at Jack. “Whoever heard of a brainy, sexy sheriff,” he said. He then went away to arrange things.

Jack looked at the scientist bemusedly. I don’t even know what to think about, he thought to himself.

So with the help of Dr. Moore and his people, Jack and Andy helped them to stretch pieces of tarp and plastic sheets over the field, with hoses pumping nitrogen underneath the sheets.

They paid particular attention to areas where the scientists seeded their super peas. And, with Andy’s optical sensors, he would be able to see if there were any spikes in hydrogen levels and he’d wave people away if there was.

Jack or Andy would then rush over with a hose blowing nitrogen and wave it at the spike, blowing the hydrogen away from them and dispersing it. If ever the hydrogen were lit, there would be a quick flash and no explosion. (They were lucky - there were neither flashes nor explosions so far except once.)

After the hose, the other person would lay a plastic sheet over the area. They would then lay enough of the sheets to link it with the rest of the covered ground. And with the hoses stuck under the first sheets pumping nitrogen, the hydrogen was blown away to the outer edges, away from the greenhouse, or it leaked out of the edge of each sheet layer in a dispersed way, preventing any more explosions.

By around three in the afternoon, they were mostly done and had most of the field covered, and, so far, no further explosions.

The constant inflow of nitrogen gas helped clear the pure hydrogen and pure oxygen. But thank god for the oxygen, though, otherwise most of them would have passed out.

Eventually, they ran out of nitrogen and Dr. Moore switched them to carbon dioxide.

Andy asked, wouldn’t the super peas generate more oxygen and hydrogen from the CO2, but Dr. Moore said it’d take them time to do that. In the meantime, that gave them a bit of leeway.

Jack called Henry and asked him to send over more nitrogen, and pretty soon, large gas-tanker trucks arrived. Soon, the plants were all covered, and that gave Dr. Moore’s people time to dig up the unsplit pea plants – carefully, of course – and transplant them into isolation troughs in the greenhouse where the pure hydrogen and oxygen was siphoned off as fast as they were produced. The split pea plants were ignored for the moment because the accumulated hydrogen and oxygen had been released already, and the amounts they continued to produce were low enough not to worry about for now.

By four, they were done, and this allowed everyone to have a break. Everyone washed up at an artesian well at the back of the greenhouse. Most of the men just took off their shirts and used them to wash up and wipe down.

Jack instinctively wanted to do the same but caught himself at the last moment. Looking around, he took his cue from the women and just washed his hands, arms, neck and face.

But afterwards, he still felt very dirty. In the end, he waited until everyone was done and had gone away to start preparing a late picnic lunch (or maybe it was dinner already).

He called Andy and asked him to get him a fresh shirt or undershirt or whatever he could find in the boxes in his jeep. In a minute, Andy was back with a short-sleeved crew-neck t-shirt and a little hand towel.

Jack liked the shirt as it was like something he would usually wear, except this one was in bright red.

Oh, well.

He sent Andy back to the car so his robotic deputy could top up his battery, and, after a quick look around, Jack stripped his sweater and bra, used the bar of soap on the window sill nearest the well, washed up very quickly, including his hair.

Soon, he was done washing himself from the waist up, and pulled the red t-shirt over his head. He tried to dry his hair with the tiny towel, but it was a mistake. He did his best, but he wasn’t able to get his hair completely dried.

He put on his jacket, which kept his half-dry hair from his red t-shirt. As he put on the jacket, he suddenly realized he forgot to ask Andy to get a bra as well. Oh, well. Too late now.

His braless condition wasn’t too obvious with his jacket on, but he couldn’t help but notice how his breasts shifted so loosely under his t-shirt.

He went to the benches out in front of the greenhouse. It was almost like a picnic spot, especially when some of the others came back to lay out plates of sandwiches as well as paper cups and plates, and large pitchers of juice and pots of coffee.

He took a seat at one of the tables, and dug in. They had been working steadily since nine in the morning, and now it was almost sunset, and they hadn’t had a break since.

It was hard work but at least they averted a possible disaster. Dr. Moore came over and said that the hydrogen that was released was dangerous to the ozone, since hydrogen acted on the ozone layer like Freon and similar aerosols – that was the one drawback for any “hydrogen economy” that replaced petroleum-based fuels with hydrogen. But if they can prevent further outgassing, the hydrogen they would be producing would be a great fuel and energy resource, as well as cheap, too. Fuel-cell cars wouldn’t be far off.

Jack tried to listen politely, but he was only half-listening. After all, he was too hungry and tired to pay attention, and he wasn’t really into the science-y talk.

Besides, he hurt in places that didn’t usually hurt. His back, for example. Someone offered a back rub, but Jack declined, feeling somewhat creeped out by the guy.

Some of the other men were unusually quiet and subdued, and just listened in on Dr. Moore’s and Jack’s conversation. Unbeknownst to Jack, these people had seen him as he washed up without a top on, and was now quite infatuated with the beautiful, newly-female sheriff. Obliviously, Jack just continued to eat, and gave these funny men staring at him a friendly though slightly suspicious grin.

After a while, though, Jack felt the pain in his back, arms and legs disappear suddenly. He was still extremely tired but he wasn’t hurting anymore. Maybe he just needed to sit down and take a break.

After a bit, though, he noticed it wasn’t just those funny guys that were staring: by the time he finished his fourth sandwich, he noted that everyone was now staring at him.

“What!” he said.

“Sheriff!” one of the girls seated nearby pointed at him.

“Don’t tell me!” Jack said, almost resignedly. “I changed again, right?”

- - - - -

Having changed again took the shine out of a good day’s work. But whatever happens to him apparently does help to renew things or whatever, because, although he still felt tired, all his aches and pains disappeared.

When Dr. Moore and his people said they could handle things now, he and Andy took their leave. Andy made a couple of circuits of their usual patrol routes first before knocking off for the night – the emergency had waylaid them and they hadn’t been able to do their patrols for the day, so a quick check around town was in order. As for Jack, he begged off and decided to go home.

He, of course, called Allison, who was still at GD, and told her about what happened to him, and she said she’d meet him there. She said she’d be a little late but she’ll be there in an hour.

So Jack arrived at an empty house.

His house was unique in Eureka in that it was actually an automated smarthouse made from a converted bomb shelter, and all that could be seen of his house aboveground was a decrepit concrete bunker and a heavy, steel door. But over the years, that had stopped bothering him.

He opened the steel door and walked down into the house itself.

“Sarah, door,” he said automatically. Sarah was the quirky but efficient AI that ran his house. Sarah actually stood for “Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat.”

“Sheriff Carter, I presume?” Sarah said over the doorbell-speaker.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Sarah opened the door. “It’s a good thing that Dr. Blake sent a photo of you otherwise I would not have made the connection,” she said over the house’s PA.

“Yeah. I guess Andy’s been updating you.”

“Indeed. What’s happening to you is quite fascinating.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Did Dr. Blake, Dr. Deacon or Dr. Monroe find a solution for it already?”

“They’re still working on it. Listen, Sarah, I’m pretty tired...”

“I can understand. Andy has told me what’s been happening at the Greenery.”

“I just want a hot shower and to lie down for a while.”

“I understand.”

The door to the bathroom slid open. Jack sighed and dropped his belt on the table by the door, took off the badge and dropped it there as well.

He asked Sarah to order a pepperoni and cheese pizza, and she countered with something else that she could prepare. Jack said he was in the mood for something simple tonight, and, after a bit of complaining, Sarah made the call.

He then stripped off his boots and clothes, left them on the floor by the bathroom and stepped inside.

The hot water felt so good, it was almost orgasmic. But Jack just showered in his usual quick fashion, still uncomfortable with his new situation.

After a quick soap, he was about to pick up his usual bottle of shampoo but stopped and got Allison’s instead.

As he washed his hair, he noticed that it wasn’t lathering up enough. He got the bottle again, squirted some more into his hand and rubbed it into his hair.

After using up maybe five times as much shampoo as he usually did, he soon had his hair bubbling, and started rinsing.

- - - - -

After his shower, he looked into the mirror. The new girl there was cute. Something he expected by now. This one looked a bit older than his previous morph so it probably wasn’t a daughter or relative of one of the GD people. He wracked his brain and finally came up with a face – it was Brooklyn Detrick, the nurse that was helping to take care of him this morning!

He looked at the face closer, and, like before, he noted that his new face wasn’t exactly a match, plus, as usual, he was six-one again, and Nurse Detrick was probably five-four at best.

He looked closer. Hmmm. Gray eyes this time. And brown hair, as well. At least he wasn’t blonde again.

He put on the dressing gown Sarah had conveniently left out for him and padded into the living room. Anticipating him, Sarah had a beer ready in the dispenser and he sipped with a sigh.

He stayed near the gas fireplace and got warm, relaxing as best he could, but found out he couldn’t. This was his fourth morph, and, if the predictions were correct, he can expect twenty-six more. Or even more than that. He prayed that there was a twenty-seventh – one with his old face and et cetera. But that wasn’t a certainty. He’ll just have to see.

The doorbell rang, and he let the pizza delivery guy in.

“Pepperoni, mushrooms and cheese?” he said as he looked Jack up and down in lecherous appreciation.

“With extra cheese?”

“That’s the one,” he grinned and offered the pizza box.

“Gimme!” Jack said.

“Jack!” Allison called. Henry and some others then followed her in.

She gave him a hug and giggled. “Brunette suits you,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. I was getting used to being a blonde.”

Allison got the people that came with her to set up the equipment she brought, and Jack gave the pizza guy his money and sent him away. The guy sighed with disappointment.

When the techs were done, they also left, leaving Allison, Grace and Henry alone with Jack.

“Sit here,” Allison said, patting what looked like a high tech chair from a dental office.

“Root canal?” Jack asked.

“Well, no,” Henry said, and gave him a look that said that was a really bad joke. “We have enough data from your three morphs now, but we still need to check you after every morph. This diagnostic chair will do that. Allison designed it to be easy to use. All you have to do is sit down in it.”

“How long do I have to sit?” he said and sat down.

“First, you press this button,” Allison said and demoed, “and remain seated until you hear the buzzer.” In about ten seconds, the buzzer went off.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she said. “We set up the same thing in my office in Medical back in GD, another one in your office and another one in the other house.”

He and Allison split their days living in either his smarthouse or over at Allison’s. Between the two of them, they actually preferred Allison’s house better, but Sarah wouldn’t take it well if she thought that she was being abandoned, so they didn’t tell Sarah anything and just switched houses every three or four days.

Sarah had slowly been given some “house duties” at Allison’s place via a remote link, like picking up after them, maintaining security, answering the phone or answering the door. (Kevin had started calling Allison’s place their “house in town” and Sarah’s as their smarthouse, while Jenna, in typical nine-year-old fashion just called them their “townhouse” and their “smarthouse.”)

Like with Andy, they felt very close to Sarah and never entertained the thought of abandoning her. So this was a good compromise. Of course, there was one thing Jack insisted on, and Sarah’s designer, Douglas Fargo, finally agreed to – just before he left, Fargo replaced Sarah’s voice with a normal girl’s voice. In fact, he was able to get the well-known voice actress Karen Jacobsen to do it. That made Sarah suddenly sound Australian.

- - - - -

After his ten-second whatever-it-was, Allison, Grace and Henry pored over the results. To avoid being underfoot, he left his favorite eggheads to their work and went upstairs carrying his two boxes from Pilar, as well as the new box that Allison brought home, also from Pilar, and started hanging the clothes up in their bedroom closet.

But their closet was already fairly full with his and Allison’s stuff, so he put his new female stuff in the guestroom closet. As he hung stuff, he saw a few things already hanging in there.

“Sarah,” he asked, “what are these?” He indicated the pants and shirts there, as well as a couple of SWAT-type tactical uniforms.

“Those are Jo’s,” Sarah replied. “She forgot them when you allowed her to stay here while her house was being renovated. She was still your deputy, then, before they assigned Andy to you. As you know, when Andy took over as deputy, she became GD’s head of security.”

“Ahhh. I remember.”

“Should I put them away, or have Jo pick them up?”

Oh, no,” he said. “It’s fine. Leave them here. They’re just a few pieces anyway, and it’ll give Jo a change of clothes if she should stay over.”

“All right.”

He picked some of his new clothes – a t-shirt, women’s underwear that seemed to fit, stretchy jeans and sneakers, and got dressed. He used Allison’s brush and smoothened out his new brown hair.

He then took all of his dirty clothes and read their tags so he could check which couldn’t go into their washing machine. Good thing everything was machine washable except for the cable knit sweater, so he put that one aside so he could bring it to Callie’s tomorrow.

Jack then put the rest into a laundry basket. There were only a few pieces, leaving the basket largely empty. So he got his other dirty clothes and went downstairs.

After loading the machine and turning it on, he went to the others and listened while he sipped his long-neglected beer.

The three talked over their findings as they enjoyed Jack’s pizza. Jack didn’t mind. He wasn’t that hungry anymore.

Allison said that, apparently, Grace and Dr. Craig was correct – Jack’s new DNA never changed from morph to morph. His morphing was, in fact, just a part of his new-normal now.

The question that they wanted an answer to now was how the change happens. Their current data showed that Jack’s changes were mostly changes resulting from what is called epigenetics and not changes to the DNA, and the changes were triggered by the particular EM waveform when his modified pituitary gland fired.

Allison said that the levels at which his pituitary fires totally had no effect on anyone else except him - his DNA was modified to be receptive to that energy, and when his body had the necessary energy levels needed for him to change, Jack’s pituitary would spontaneously fire, and what he changes into was dictated by the particular EM waveform it released.

Henry said that they could duplicate the EM waveform, allowing them to pick which person he morphs into, but Grace only partially agreed, saying that the change only happens if Jack had enough energy available to fuel the morph, so it was a combination.

Jack still wondered what the so-called “energy” was about, and Allison said since the change was initiated and controlled by his brain, it was electrical energy, but what powered his brain was mostly glucose. So it was his blood glucose levels that mattered.

“The thing is,” she said, “we suspect that the morph is also triggered when the body senses that there’s enough surplus energy to make it happen. If that’s true, that means you wouldn’t really have voluntary control over it.”

Jack nodded. At least he was able to follow that. “So, the reason I changed this afternoon was because I ate too much, and the time before that was because I was zapped with static electricity?”

“Yes. But, Jack, that means we have a handle on how and when a morph happens. We don’t know the specific mechanisms of the change itself, but we can make it happen, or stop making it happen.”

“So we can trigger it but we can also stop it from being triggered.”

“Yes, we do, actually. We just have to keep track of your blood sugar.”

“In other words...”

“In other words,” Grace said, “you have to stay on a diet.”

“Okay... Do I have to take medication, like a diabetic? Insulin, or whatever diabetics take?”

Allison giggled. “No! It’s not diabetes – it’s just that you have to stay on a diet. Otherwise, you morph.”

Jack sighed and nodded. There goes pizza night and taco night, he thought. “Okay. Now how about getting me back to me again... I mean, you can change me back to me again, right?”

“Yes, we can,” Allison said. “We just need to know the specific EM waveform for your old Jack Carter body. We can then artificially create that field, and when you morph, you will morph into Jack Carter again.”

He felt like cheering. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

Grace shrugged. “The thing is, Jackie,” she said, “we don’t know what that waveform is yet.”

“How can we know?”

Allison took his hand. “We have to wait for you to go through the change that morphs you back to Jack Carter, and then take some readings.”

“But we don’t know who I’ll change into next...” Jack said.

“Yes.”

“So, that means?”

“That means, we have to wait for you to naturally change back into Jack Carter. Which means, we have to wait for you to go through all your morphs, and catch it when you do change back to Jack, and then record the waveform.”

“Ah, damn...”

“I’m sorry, Jack.” Allison gave him a hug.

“That’s okay. At least we know there’s a way out, now.”

“There’s one other thing, Jackie,” Grace said. “Allison and I are finishing that EM waveform emitter – the device that will allow us to pick what you change into. We should have it ready by tomorrow. Are you game to try it out?”

“What’s involved?”

“Well, basically we make you morph into one of the forms you’ve already changed into - we figured out the waveforms of your old morphs, and we were able to record your new one just now.

“If we can deliberately select your morph, then that means our theory is correct.”

“All right. We do that tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

The night finished on that upbeat note, and Grace and Henry left them alone.

Now that they were alone, Jack and Allison felt awkward. After all, Jack was a girl at the moment. Allison didn’t know how to behave, but Jack did his best to normalize it, and didn’t insist on anything beyond just hugging, or holding each other more like they were best friends.

That relieved Allison, and soon, they were treating each other normally, other than in a romantic way, unfortunately. In an hour or so, Kevin arrived, with Jenna and little Kimmy in tow, and there was a bit of a reunion.

Kevin was looking at Jack with his mouth hanging open.

“Ohmigod, Jack!” Kevin said, “you’re hot!”

“Kev...”

“Incredibly hot!”

“Cool it, Kev,” Jack said, “don’t let your mom hear you.”

“Too late!” Allison said. “You should have seen him this morning, Kevin.”

“What?”

Allison sat on the couch with Jenna’s arms around her. She pulled out a tablet and showed it to Kevin.

“Ohmigod!” he said. It was a picture of Jack when he was in Medical.

“Swipe it for Jack’s previous morphs.”

Kev swiped and saw his other looks.

“Ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod!”

“Just imagine how I feel,” Jack said. He was holding Kim on his lap while she looked at him with big eyes. Kim found his female look fascinating, and was squishing his nose and lightly squeezing with his boobies playfully.

It wasn’t too painful so Jack allowed his four–year-old girl to keep on playing. He thought this might take out any weirdness she might feel when her father changes to a girl.

Originally, they worried that the kids wouldn’t understand, but Jenna just shrugged and said, “it’s just Eureka.”

Kim copied her sister. “It’s Eureka,” she echoed.

An hour later, the girls tired of playing with Jack, and Allison brought both of them upstairs to sleep.

As for Kevin, he stayed up late and chatted Jack up, asking things like what’s been happening, and how did it feel like to be a girl.

Jack answered as truthfully as he could. He chuckled to himself a bit because it seemed to him that Kevin was trying to make a move on him. He needed to talk to Allison about that.

Eventually, Jack said goodnight to Kevin and Sarah, and went upstairs.

He stopped by Jenna’s and Kim’s room, gave each girl his customary good night kiss, and Kim gave him a sleepy hug around the neck.

Allison watched him as he said good night to the girls and marveled how much he was still Jack despite his being a girl. Allison wasn’t attracted to him physically, of course, but what she found amazing was that it didn’t seem to matter: it was Jack-the-person that she found attractive. She had to wonder why.

In any case, they both went to bed. Clearly, there wasn’t going to be any sex tonight, but they didn’t mind that. They eventually fell asleep in each other’s arms.

- - - - -

Hours later, Jack’s smartphone rang, waking both of them up.

Jack checked the bedside clock and noted that it was about seven AM. At least it was time to get up.

“This is Jack Carter,” he said sleepily into his phone.

“Jack! It’s Henry! There’s an emergency in GD. You better get over here now!”

“Dammit!” he said sleepily. “Okay, Henry, I’ll be there right away.”

“Thanks, Jack. It’s Dr. Connery’s robot again. So you better be prepared. I got Jo’s people on standby waiting for you.”

He hung up. “Oh, no...”

“Jack?” Allison said sleepily.

“Sorry, Allison,” he said, and leaned back to give Allison a kiss on the cheek. “Go back to sleep.”

“That’s okay,” she said as she tried to stop herself from yawning, “but you better take a look in the mirror.”

Jack had that sinking feeling.

“I changed again? Dammit!”

to be continued in Episode 4: “Special Weapons And Tacos” Jan. 11, Friday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

But with the timely return of Allison, they were able to uncover how Jack changed, giving him hope that they will somehow be able to fix him. It was the first time in days that Jack finally got a good night’s sleep, but in the morning he’s awakened by a frantic call from Henry – it seems the robot that we met in Episode 1 was at it again, and Jack was needed. And this was on top of him just finding out he changed again.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

Jack had just finished helping Andy avert a disaster the day before, and now there seems to be another one in the making.

After a couple of days of investigation, Henry had cleared Dr. Jennifer Connery to start fixing her robot – the one that had rampaged and destroyed a substantial part of Section Nine and caused Jack to turn into a girl, but not before Jack was able to blow its head off with a portable rail gun.

Having gotten the go-ahead from Henry, Dr. Connery replaced the robot’s head that Jack blew off, but hours later, sometime in the early morning, the robot activated itself on its own, inconveniently, or conveniently, depending on your point of view, when the number of people inside GD was at its lowest.

In an apparent attempt to leave the building, it injured several scientists and caused several of the emergency blast doors to be tripped, trapping itself in the building, along with the scientists it had injured.

Because Jo wasn’t there to take care of things, her security staff had to manage on their own. Per protocol, they evacuated all the people they could and sealed the building. At the moment, they were in their tactical uniforms and manning blockades to all entrances of the building.

Henry decided to call Jack to get him to manage the situation.

While Jack listened to the briefing of Henry’s assistant, Larry Haberman, on his phone, he got ready. He rushed to their closet and pulled out his uniform. And then he remembered. He looked into the mirror and saw his new face. He was a blonde again and was almost as slim as he was yesterday morning.

Almost angrily, he thrust his uniform back in the closet. His old uniform just wouldn’t do.

So he went to the guestroom to look at other options.

After putting on some underwear, he looked at his new clothes. While he was thinking what he could use, his eyes fell on Jo’s tactical uniform.

Roughly speaking, he was now the same size as Jo Lupo, except for the fact that he was about seven inches taller than her. The top part of the SWAT uniform, which included a flak jacket, a singlet, a utility harness and a bulletproof vest seemed to fit, but when he put on the flak jacket, it was just too short. So he kept everything on except for the jacket.

He found that the singlet wasn’t really a singlet but more like a stretchy sleeveless bodysuit. Just as well – if it were a singlet, he probably wouldn’t be able to tuck it in and he’d be walking around with his bellybutton exposed.

He then got the bottom part, which were just the boots and the stretchy pants.

Just like the top, the pants’ stretchy material, he knew, was made of the special, super-stretchy fiber that was resistant to bullets, to tears and, therefore resistant to knife cuts or punctures.

So he put it on, and, like the bodysuit, it stretched and fit him like a glove. But given that he was so much taller than Jo, the pants looked more like Capri pants – they came down to between his knees and ankles.

He then saw the boots that he wore yesterday and, laying them beside his leg, he noted the uppers were long enough that they would reach higher than where his pants ended.

He rushed back to their room, grabbed a pair of black, wooly tube socks, sat on their bed and put them on. He then put the boots on, and the socks just made the boots tight enough to be comfortable.

He then stood up and looked at himself in their full-length mirror.

“How do I look,” he asked Allison, grinning.

Allison had been watching Jack as he dressed frantically. All the while, she had to giggle at his fumbling and indecisiveness, but he was actually managing very well, and she decided not to help as she might just slow him down. But it’s Jack, after all – very adaptive.

Jack had morphed into a likeness of Kira Knight, one of GD’s security personnel, and Sergeant Knight was yet another blonde. “You’re looking great, Jack,” she said, smiling, and Jack gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Yes, indeed, Sheriff,” Sarah said in her new Australian voice. She sounded like Siri, but that wasn’t surprising since Fargo used the same voice actress Apple used.

“You are looking quite attractive,” she continued, “in a deadly sort of way. Jo would be proud.”

“Thanks, Sarah,” he said. “Allison, I have to go.”

Allison shooed him away. “Right. Go, go – take care of GD. I’ll be right behind you after I take care of the kids. Go!”

He gave her another kiss on the cheek, grabbed his belt and other stuff, and rushed out.

Allison followed him as he rushed out, and was actually thinking that he was being quite attractive.

She wasn’t into girls, really, but he was being very capable and very take-charge – such people were always attractive to her. And since it was still Jack underneath that fashion-model face and body, she was feeling something that she hadn’t felt since Jack became a girl.

She shook her head and headed back up to get the kids ready for the day, and to arrange for a sitter or something.

- - - - -

As Jack drove, he called Andy on the radio, briefed him on what’s been happening, and asked him to meet with him at GD’s gate.

Minutes later, they were both at GD and Jack met with Jo’s SWAT team.

The lead commando came up to them and saluted.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” the ex-army soldier said. “Our squad has been assigned to you while the rest are deployed around the building.”

“Thank you, Officer Dalton,” Jack said after he looked at the nameplate on his jacket.

“Do you have anything good enough to disable or subdue the robot?”

“Not really, Ma’am... I mean, sir, except maybe this.”

He handed Jack what was shaped like a sports drink bottle.

“It’s a riot net, with a tensile strength of about a ton. You throw it at the target and the net will be deployed around it.” He gave Jack a pair as well as a utility belt with lots of other stuff, and Andy another pair of the nets.

“Thanks,” Jack said. He slipped the two canisters under his belt and strapped the utility belt he was given around his waist. But it was just too large. Instead, Jack wore the oversized belt bandoleer-style: he threw it over his shoulder and clicked it closed over his hip on the opposite side. For some reason, Dalton found that sexy.

They were fully briefed of the sheriff’s situation, and it was obvious he had mophed into a near-copy of Sgt. Kira Knight. The sheriff’s version of his colleague was similar enough to be recognizable but he was even more attractive than the original.

“Sir,” Dalton continued, “Dr. Deacon said that he detected that the robot has a radio. He believes it can monitor our communications.”

“Got it. Radio silence then,” Jack said to Dalton. “All radios off. You and your people follow the deputy and me. First fire team ten meters behind us, and the second fire team twenty meters after them. That will maximize our deployment. You will be Tail End Charlie and watch our backs. Standard tactics. Clear?”

Dalton nodded in approval. He had heard that the Sheriff knew his stuff, and was glad being changed to a girl didn’t take any of that away. Not that he thought of girls as being less competent. He just imagined how being changed to someone else would mess him up. The sheriff was coping better than he would have.

“Sir!” he saluted and started gesturing to his people.

The eleven of them crouched and rushed the main gate. The commandos deployed themselves against posts or poles while Jack and Andy fetched up against either side of the sliding main doors.

Jack got a couple of the charges from the belt he was given and stuck them to the door’s lock. He then ran back and triggered them.

After a powerful blast, they saw the lock disintegrate into powder.

Andy rushed to the door. With incredible strength, he jammed his fingers into the jamb and, like a cheesy Hercules character from some B movie, he pushed the doors to the sides.

As he did so, gunfire rang out. Andy was hit on the chest with several bullets, and he was thrown backwards. He crashed to the floor and stopped moving.

Although Andy was robotic, he wasn’t bulletproof. Jack should have given him a vest as well.

“Andy!” Jack screamed. But then he remembered Andy was really a robot. He wasn’t really dead – and he could be fixed.

Dr. Connery’s robot could just be glimpsed beyond the now-open doors, so the commandos fired through the gap of the doors at it.

The robot was obviously bulletproof, and was not affected by the bullets but, nevertheless, it moved away and took refuge further inside the building.

That gave them a chance and they all rushed the door and went in. Jack took a moment to lay a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “We’ll be back, Andy, and we’ll get you fixed up,” he said, and followed the others.

“Sheriff!” Dalton called and waved to him. Jack rushed over.

“The robot is in the rotunda,” he said, “probably hiding just behind the doorway, waiting to rush us.” He gestured to the left of the doorway.

Jack nodded. “I thought it was disarmed,” he said.

“It’s probably using some ordnance it found in the security desk.” Dalton pointed at the security desk beside them. The table’s drawers were open and sticking out.

“Good.” Jack took off the belt he was just given, and took all of the explosives off it. “Give me all of yours, too,” he said to Dalton.

Dalton started unclipping them.

“But, Sheriff,” Dalton said, “the robot is bulletproof and armored – I doubt if explosives will affect it.”

“Yes,” Jack said, “but his weapons aren’t armored.”

Dalton nodded in sudden realization. “Wow!” he said, “that’s brilliant!”

He held out his hand, and Jack gave him his explosives. Dalton did something to them so they could be triggered simultaneously, and then slid them on the floor one by one, hooking them and making them go through the doorway and hooking to the left.

“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, and they all took cover. He then pressed a trigger and all of the grenades exploded at the same time. Fire, smoke and debris shot out of the doorway.

They knew the building would be able to withstand it, and with blast doors engaged, the explosion would be contained in the rotunda area. Hopefully, Henry’s office won’t be too damaged.

Ventilation ducts opened up and started to suck enough of the smoke and dust that they could breathe and see again. Jack rushed into the rotunda area.

“Sheriff!” Dalton called, but he was too late. “Dammit,” he cursed. He waved to the others and they all followed.

“Inside, they found Jack standing in the middle of the empty rotunda facing the robot.

Jack was coughing in the smoke and dust, but it was already thinning out.

The robot was prone on the floor, undamaged but was having trouble getting to its feet because of the loose debris and the robot’s general inflexibility.

Coughing, Jack took out his two nets, and threw one of them against the robot.

After a small crack, the canister let loose its net, and it covered the robot. Contact with the air, started to make it constrict, and, soon, it had the robot wrapped in its unbreakable fibers.

Jack threw the other canister and, like the first one, the second net covered the robot as well.

They watched as the robot struggled in the net, servos and motors whining, but it was totally cocooned in the net and couldn’t get out.

They stood around watching it struggle, but, incredibly, after a minute, they heard the sound of rope snapping. Even the unbreakable nets weren’t enough.

“Officer Dalton!” Jack called.

Dalton got his nets and deployed them as well. But, even with the new nets, they knew it was just a matter of time.

Jack looked around and saw a couple of dangling cables.

He saw a thick one, about the thickness of his forearm, and experimentally tapped the insulated part. So, though the bare end was sparking, he wasn’t being hurt.

“Sheriff!” one of the commandos called, but Jack waved him away.

Tentatively, he touched it again, and, experimentally, he grabbed it. He was fine.

He pulled it down, extending the cable out some more. He then approached the robot and touched the sparking end against it.

The robot started squirming as hundreds of amps started coursing through it.

Like a massive Jacob’s Ladder, blue electric arcs started coursing through it and sparks started flying.

The robot squealed like a pig, and the air was soon filled with the smell of burning insulation.

They were afraid it might explode, so Dalton pulled the sheriff away and they all took cover.

After a minute, though, the robot stopped moving.

To be safe, they left it for after another minute. Dalton then tried to kick the cable away but it had melted and stuck to the robot.

Jack went to the opposite wall, opened a switchbox and pulled down a big trip switch. The electric hum and smell of ozone slowly faded away and they watched the robot stay there, unmoving.

Jack asked Dalton to call his people and signal the all-clear while he called Henry.

“Hey, Henry,” he said into his phone. “We got the bastard. It’s all safe now.”

“Good work Jackie,” Henry said. “Anyone hurt?”

“Andy was hit,” he said. “He’s out front.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Henry said. He knew how Jack felt about his deputy. “Don’t worry, we’ll fix him up.”

“Thanks. I’m afraid your office is a mess.”

“Don’t worry about it. See you in a bit.”

He hung up and sat on the stairs.

The squad leader came up to him.

“I’ve called the others, ma’am, and gave them the all-clear.”

Jack looked up and gave him a weary smile. “Thanks. And good work.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, “but it was all you. Good work, ma’am. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of the paperwork.” He grinned.

Jack gave him another smile and a thumbs up.

They all filed past him, some giving him handshakes.

He looked around at the rubble. Not too much rubble, actually, but the front office and rotunda was going to need a shitload of paint.

“So, Sheriff,” someone called, “you got him, huh?” It was Dr. Jennifer Connery, the creator of the robot. She came out from further inside the building. That’s weird, he thought, weren’t all the blast doors closed?

“Yep,” he said, standing up and pointing to the robot.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, walking towards the unmoving thing. “Something went wrong, obviously. Don’t worry, I’ll get on it right away.” She looked down at the robot, shaking her head sadly.

Jack walked towards her and stood beside the pretty scientist.

“I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again,” she said.

“I’m sure it won’t,” Jack replied. He casually brought out his handcuffs, and before she knew it, Jack had her cuffed.

“Sheriff!” Jennifer cried. “What are you doing!”

“What else? Dr. Jennifer Connery, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you by the courts. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

“Sheriff!”

He sighed. He was getting impatient with Dr. Connery’s act. “Do you understand?” he asked.

- - - - -

Henry agreed with Jack’s arrest of Dr. Connery (but he would never override Jack in such matters, in any case), and had her incarcerated in the high-security holding cell in Jo’s office. Good thing Jo was on her way back – she could take charge of interrogating the scientist.

Henry had “Ross” the robot back in Section Ten, and was starting to find out what went wrong with it. He said, hopefully, he’ll have some answers the following day, but his priority at the moment was Andy.

Henry said it was a simple repair – all he needed to do was take out Andy’s internal chest unit, replace it with a spare, and reboot him. At most, it would be a thirty-minute repair job.

As for Jack, he was in Medical with Allison and Grace. He was sitting in a duplicate of the chair he sat in last night, and waited for Allison and Grace to finish some adjustments to something that looked like a computer mouse. As discussed the previous night, it was time to deliberately trigger another morph.

As he looked at the two women working together, he thought of everything that had happened. But all he could think about was Henry calling him “Jackie.” He’d have expected it from others but not his best friend.

He suspected where it came from – it was probably because Grace had been calling him Jackie for a while, already, and Henry just picked it up from her.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it was. Because it put into question who he was now. He was still the same person – the same man – but his best friend didn’t see him as the same person – the same man - anymore.

Was it just a physical thing? Or was it something more fundamental?

But he didn’t want to think of that right now. He just wanted to get back to normal. He crossed his fingers that what Allison and Grace were doing will help make that happen.

“Drink this,” Grace said, and handed him a tall tumbler of what looked like orange juice. Jack sniffed it. It even smelled like orange juice.

“What is it,” Jack asked.

“It’s like Tang,” Allison said.

Jack started drinking it, and it was awfully syrupy. “Sweet,” he said mildly. Actually it was incredibly sweet – sweet enough to make the back of his throat tingle.

“It’s actually eighty percent sugar,” she said. “Come on! Bottoms up!”

Jack just swallowed it and trying not to taste it.

“Why?” he asked after he finished it off.

“We need to give you a large bolus of something sugary to help power the change.”

“Ah.” He gave the empty glass to Allison.

“Now hold this,” Grace said, handing him the device they were fiddling with a moment ago. It was in the general size and shape of standard computer mouse without the buttons, wire or little roller ball. On the rounded side was a dial and beside the dial was a little window that currently showed “01” in glowing LEDs.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“That will control your change. Right now, it’s set to make your morph to be like the first morph you went through.” She tapped at the little displayed number.

“Okay...”

“And I am all set with a new outfit,” Allison said. She held up a strapless dress she got from the stuff Jack left at the smarthouse.

“Okay...” He looked at them. “Now what?”

“Now we wait for you to change.”

They looked at each other. But after a minute of nothing happening, they started to get worried.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Allison said.

“Wait!” Jack exclaimed. He started to feel something. “I think it’s happening.”

Allison activated the chair and it started ticking over, gathering data as Jack started to morph.

And as they watched, they saw Jack slowly morph into his first form – the near-clone of Dawn Cameron, the daughter of Dr. Cameron from Section Fourteen.

“It worked!” Grace said, jumping up and down.

“It did?” Jack said.

“Yes, it did!” Allison said, and started peppering his face with kisses. “That means all we need to do now is wait for when you change back to the old Jack Carter!” She kissed him again.

“That’s great!”

- - - - -

Later on, Jack and the newly repaired Andy went back to the office.

Jack wanted to pick up the latest uniforms from Mary, the proprietress of Mary’s Uniforms and Fashions, as well as some of the uniforms she already made that Jack had been keeping in the office, so he started walking towards Mary’s shop.

As Mary feared, she did run out of material, so the new uniform they made was just a short-sleeved version of his uniform.

Jack didn’t mind – it was still regulation, and after saying goodbye to Andy, he drove home with some of the uniforms. This time, instead of driving to the smarthouse, he drove to Allison’s house, or as Jenna calls it, their townhouse.

He felt very cheerful because they had taken the first step to getting him back to normal.

He also chuckled. Wait till Kevin gets a good look at him with his new morph.

Remembering it was Taco Night, he goosed the accelerator, excited to get home. Mmm... tacos... he thought.

to be continued in Episode 5: “One Fine Day... In Eureka” Jan. 14, Monday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, stopped Dr. Jennifer Connery’s giant robot, Ross, from taking over Global Dynamics. Andy was hit, but he was a robot, too, so Henry was able to repair him quickly.

So Jack deactivated the giant robot and captured Dr. Connery under suspicion of deliberately causing the robot to go berserk.

When everything was back to normal, Grace and Allison brought Jack to Medical and deliberately triggered another change in Jack, as planned. It was the first step to getting Jack back to normal.

It worked, and Jack deliberately morphed back to his first morph – he again turned into an almost-clone of Dawn Cameron, daughter of Dr. Cameron from Section Fourteen.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

After a good night’s sleep, they were all gathered at the dining table and having breakfast. After breakfast, Jack was to drop off Kevin, Jenna and little Kimmy at Eureka’s school, Tesla School, while Allison Blake, Jack’s spouse, and medical director & COO of Global Dynamics, was to go directly to GD to meet with Henry and Jo Lupo – they were about to interrogate Dr. Connery.

The usual banter was almost normal, except with Kevin. It seemed Kevin was quite attracted to his stepfather’s female form, which was really messing with him. But keeping in mind what his mother said, he tried to ignore that. But it was sooo hard.

“Here, Jack,” Allison said, handing Jack a metal bracelet. It was a pair of half-circles connected on one end by a hinge. On the other end was a lock. It would allow a person to put it around his wrist and snap it closed. Around the perimeter was a thin silver line, but upon closer inspection, Jack saw the silver line was actually glass or crystal.

“What a nice gift. Thank you, Allison. Do you want me to wear it now?”

“Yes, please.”

Jack snapped it closed, and he noted that it wasn’t tight on his wrist at all, but it was small enough that it wouldn’t fall off.

“Nice. Thanks, Allison.”

Allison chuckled. “That’s not a gift, Jack. It’s actually something to keep watch on your blood sugar.”

“Huh?”

“Remember that your morphs happen only if your blood glucose is at a certain level?”

"Ahhh!”

Allison nodded. “Yes. If the crystal line turns from silver to red, that means you have a high-enough blood sugar to power a morph. Also, if the line starts to flash, that means that your pituitary gland is about to fire. The flashing will start slow, and gradually become faster. If the flashing is so fast that the red light is almost steady, that means that your morph is about to start.”

“Oh. How long does it take from the time it starts blinking to becoming steady.”

“It depends. It can be as long as ten minutes or as short as a minute. And it won’t ever start flashing if you don’t have a high-enough blood sugar.”

Jack nodded.

“Also...” Allison handed him a little bottle of pills.

“What’s this?”

“That’s a super-fast-acting version of the pills that diabetics take to lower blood sugar. If you notice that your bracelet has turned red, or it has started to flash, you can take one of these and it’ll stop you from morphing, at least for an hour.”

Jack nodded. “Got it.”

“Okay, Jack,” Allison said, “it’s time.” She waved another big glass of that syrupy orange juice. With such a large intake of glucose, they knew Jack’s morph would be triggered.

“Really, Allison?” Jack groaned.

“It’s best to get through all your morphs quickly. It’s the quickest way to get to your Jack Carter morph right away.”

“All right,” he said, and got the glass. He then drank down the orange flavored sugar-drink and sat in the diagnostic chair Allison had installed in the living room.

Allison switched it on, and they all waited for the change.

Jack looked at his new bracelet and, in a minute, it turned red, and then it started flashing.

a minute after that, the flashing became faster and faster until Jack morphed again, this time into an almost-duplicate of Rebecca Roman, one of the administrative people at GD. Allison dutifully programmed the new EM waveform into Jack’s EM emitter – the computer mouse-like device that they used to select which morph Jack turned into yesterday. With this one, there were now six morphs recorded into the device. Twenty-five more to go.

Kevin looked at Jack with mouth agape. He couldn’t believe it – Jack had changed into yet another hottie. But this was his stepfather. He couldn’t think that way about his stepfather. He shook his head and muttered things under his breath as he went to get his books.

“Allison,” Jack said, “why not go through all the morphs in one go? That way, we can get it all over with right away.”

“That would be dangerous. Less than nine hours between changes can cause your brain to stop working.”

“Oh.” He looked at his bracelet and noted that it had stopped flashing and the crystal line had turned from red to clear.

Allison kissed him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can’t really force a change, and your body won’t allow changes that can be fatal.”

Jack nodded again. He went back upstairs to get dressed. He looked through his new uniforms. Looks like one of them would fit him now.

“This will be great!” he enthused. He had to wonder at the irony of it, being happy to wear his uniform. But anything other than girly clothes had to be better.

This new morph had light-brown eyes and strawberry-blonde hair almost down to the middle of his back, and it was fairly wavy – almost kinky. Allison showed him how to manage it by using a round brush.

He slipped the little tube of pills into his pocket, and walked downstairs with Allison.

In a few minutes, they all left the house – Allison went straight to GD to start their interrogation of Dr. Connery, while Jack went and dropped the kids off at Tesla.

At Tesla, as they got down from the jeep, Jenna and Kimmy gave Jack his usual kiss on the cheek and hug, and he and Kevin high-fived, as usual.

As Jack drove away, Kevin shook his head. “What a hottie,” he said to himself. “This is sooo messed up. Dammit!” He shook his head again, brought his sisters to their classrooms and then went on to his own classes, still shaking his head.

- - - - -

Allison had suggested that Jack not go on patrol, leaving that to Andy. Instead, she suggested that he do a day’s worth of foot patrol, to allow people to see him and get them more used to the new Jack.

He’d rather not, actually, since he was still embarrassed by his new situation, but he had to agree with Allison’s logic.

So when he got to town, he parked near Café Diem and walked across the street to his office.

“Good morning!” he said cheerily.

“Good morning Boss,” Andy answered.

Jack asked if Andy was feeling okay. Andy thanked Jack, and said he was back to one hundred percent – Henry’s repairs were perfect.

“Good, good,” Jack replied, and then told Andy his plan for the day.

Andy nodded and then went out for their usual patrol around town, especially to the perimeter of town, and then a quick circuit of GD’s main compound.

Andy also left yet another new uniform for Jack that Mary had made, and had it hanging in the bathroom.

Jack thanked him before he left and started on some paperwork, to delay his having to go out and allowing people to see him. But Andy had done most of paperwork again so, in less than thirty minutes, Jack found out that he was done.

He sighed. There was no excuse anymore so he decided to start his foot patrol.

Stepping out and walking to Café Diem, he tried to smile. As he walked, people started looking him.

“Is it you, Sheriff Carter?” the barber in the corner barbershop came up. And as usual, two identical barbers followed. Throughout the years he had been in Eureka, Jack had not bothered to find out the name of their town barber, or barbers, as the case may be, except that he knew them as the “Baker brothers.” In fact, during his entire time in Eureka, he’d seen the barber was actually one of a pair of twins, and then later triplets. Over the years, Jack had seen up to more than six of them at the same time. He just didn’t have the heart to find out if they really were clones or androids or whatever.

In fact he avoided the barber/barbers altogether, and would have his hair cut at a barbershop outside of town instead.

And, what do you know, he thought, here he/they is/are... how confusing...

“Yes, it is me,” Jack said, and shook hands with all the barbers. “Hi.”

“Quite a change, huh, Sheriff,” one of them said.

He smiled politely. “Yes, it has,” he said, “but I’m good.”

“Well, good luck to you,” another of them said.

He nodded. “Thanks!”

He thought of mentioning the Baker Brothers to Allison later – if they were clones, they might be able to help with his morphs.

Most of the people on the sidewalk also wished him well, and shook his hand.

Jack politely smiled and said hello. In a few minutes, he was at Café Diem.

“Hey, Vincent,” he called, “can I get a burger and fries, please!” He was feeling peckish, so maybe a bite would help.

It was his usual order, so Vincent must know it was him. Vincent was the proprietor of the town’s most popular restaurant. He was also Jack and Allison’s friend.

Vincent turned and saw Jack. His hands went to his face, which was a mask of disbelief.

“Ohmigod,” he exclaimed, “is that you, Jack?” He went around the counter to get a closer look at him.

“In the flesh,” Jack said. “And, damn, just look at that flesh,” he said humorously, looking down at his breasts.

“I was so worried,” Vincent said, and gave Jack one of his patented rib-breaking bear hugs.

“Vincent!” Jack protested. “I give, I give!”

Vincent let him down. “I’m sorry, Jack. Are you okay?”

“Super-fine, Vincent. So how about that burger? On second thought, make it a small one. Gotta watch the blood sugar.”

“Coming up!”

Pretty soon, the usual breakfast regulars surrounded him, and he found himself telling them what happened to him.

Not wanting to miss out on a nice, juicy story, Vincent was back in a flash with Jack's food.

Jack was having fun, and thought that Allison’s idea was a good one after all.

- - - - -

Allison got to GD and met up with Henry. His office, which used to be Douglas Fargo’s office, was mostly intact. The glass windows that looked down into GD’s main rotunda had cracked and starred, but didn’t break, so his office was intact.

However, the glass needed to be replaced and that was what Dr. Tanya Zimmer’s people were doing now. So Henry was happy to leave them to it and to go and interrogate Dr. Connery at Jo’s office instead.

Henry had just finished his examination of Ross, the robot that had gone on a rampage yesterday, but, as best as he could determine, it didn’t malfunction and was actually just following its programming. This was what he was trying to explain to Jo at the moment.

“The thing is, Jo,” Henry was saying, “we don’t really know what he was programmed to do.”

“Why?” Jo asked.

“Well, aside from shorting out the robot, when Jack electrocuted it, he also erased its onboard memory.”

Jo thought about it. “Maybe Zane can recover it. He was the one that was able to recover most of the memory of the Columbus’ organic computer years ago, and was able to reconstruct the data from the PALS’ hard drive. He’s not doing much at the moment, except reviewing telemetry data from Astraeus II.”

“Hmmm. Good idea. Get him on this.”

“I’m on it,” Jo said, and called Zane Donovan, one of Eureka’s best and brightest, and Jo’s fiancé.

Allison took that moment to come in.

“Hey, Henry,” Allison said. “How’re you? How’s the office?”

“Good morning, Allison,” Henry replied. “I’m doing all right. A little tired, though. I’ve been up all night checking out Dr. Connery’s robot.”

“I just bet Grace loved that,” Allison laughed.

Henry sighed. “You can say that again,” he said.

He then told Allison what he and Jo talked about, and Allison agreed that it would be good to get Zane working on this, too.

“But, speaking of memory...” Allison took her tablet and showed Henry some footage she got from the security cameras in Section Ten.

They saw Jennifer working on her robot. As she was working on it, they saw her reach into her lab coat’s pocket and bring out something. She then brought whatever it was up to the robot’s new head she had just installed and attached whatever it was to the inside of the head.

After doing that, she took something out as well, and she dropped whatever she took out into her pocket.

“What’s that?” Henry said.

“Let me see that,” Jo said. After her call, Jo had come back and had been peeking over their shoulders at the video.

Allison handed her the tablet, and, after Jo typed something, she was able to zoom in on Jennifer’s hand.

“That’s a memory chip!” Allison said. The picture was clear enough that they could actually read the ID numbers of the chip. They all agreed that Zane should start with that, and Jo sent him the picture.

“Okay, then,” Henry said, “let’s go to the interrogation. One thing, though, let’s not tell her we saw this. We might catch her in a lie.”

The others agreed and they went to Jo’s office.

“Jo,” Allison said, “What has the DoD said about all this?”

“They said they’re waiting for us to finish our investigation.”

“That’s weird. Wouldn’t they be more concerned about the project? They’ve already paid a hundred million for this project, you’d think they’d at least keep better tabs on it.”

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

- - - - -

Except for Jack, Jo was second to none when it came to interrogations, and she did a thorough job, but they just couldn’t find anything wrong with Jennifer Connery’s statements.

Jennifer sounded sincere and she was offended that her word was being doubted. She even demanded that they use a lie detector test on her – it was her right, after all. And though the test indicated that she wasn’t lying, all of them knew that lie detectors weren’t foolproof. To Jo, the lie detector’s results were less than useless.

Jennifer asked what the DoD said, and Jo told her that they were waiting for GD’s investigation to be completed before they intervened.

“Well, then, when will your investigation be done?” Jennifer asked.

“Listen, you,” Jo said angrily, “your robot tried to take over GD, and it caused a lot of damage! And it hurt Andy! We’ll be done when we’re done!”

“Andy! Your tinker-toy deputy? Hah! That robot has nothing on Ross!”

Jo surged forward, trying to slap the roboticist, but Henry and Allison stopped her.

“Andy is a better robot than your pile of junk will ever be,” Jo said. “He’s saved this town dozens of times, and is a better man than many real people I know!”

“Anthropomorphism!” Jennifer said. “You’re just biased because he looks like a human!”

Allison looked at Jennifer. That’s an unusual thing for a roboticist to say, she thought. After all, the goal was to make a robot more human.

Allison and Henry dragged Jo out and closed the cell.

They then stepped out into the hallway, out of Jennifer’s earshot.

“Calm down, Jo,” Allison said. “We feel the same way about Andy, but we need information.”

Jo nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Allison looked at Henry. “What was that about anthropomorphism?” she asked. “That’s an unusual point of view for a roboticist to take about robots.”

“Yes. And if you look at Ross, it’s like they didn’t even try to make it look human.”

“What are you talking about,” Jo said. “It has two arms, two legs, a head...”

“But other than that, Jo, it’s not human-looking at all.”

“I don’t get it – wouldn’t that robot look more human-looking when they complete it? Isn’t it supposed to be an all-purpose robot to help substitute for people in dangerous or difficult situations?”

“Jo, Ross is finished. What Dr. Connery is trying to do is just fix its AI.”

“I don’t get it. You mean, that robot is supposed to look like that?”

“Yes!”

“That is weird.”

Allison nodded. “Yes,” she said. “and did you notice, she didn’t mention replacing any chip on the robot? Or how she got into the rotunda despite the fact that all the blast doors were engaged?”

Jo shrugged. “The surveillance cameras in that area were down at the time.”

“Suspicious...”

Henry nodded. “And another thing that’s suspicious is that the DoD isn’t more concerned with what’s happening.”

Jo shrugged. “I tried to get more information at the DoD when I was there,” she said, “but everything checked out, except that this robot project isn’t considered a high priority, and isn’t scheduled for trials for at least two more years.”

“That in itself is suspicious,” Allison said. “If this is supposed to be a project important enough for the DoD to throw half a billion dollars at for us to try and finish it in three months...”

“Something smells here,” Henry said. “Jo, ask Zane to rush that check of that chip.”

“Right. Oh, Henry, by the way...” Jo held up a half-inch square computer chip.

“What!”

“While I was getting ‘mad,’ and you were all distracted, I snuck that out of Dr. Connery’s pocket.”

“Jo, you are amazing!”

Jo chuckled. “But of course!”

- - - - -

Jack was at the new park that the town had put up a few months ago. This early in the afternoon, there were only a few people in there. He even caught a few kids that were playing hooky.

Eureka hardly needed a truancy officer, and the few kids who tried to skip classes were mostly those who were getting bored or were overdue to be graduated. Jack knew these kids, and the school wasn’t really too worried about these particular ones. They’ve been overdue to graduate for a while, anyway.

Nevertheless, he did tell them to get back to Tesla, or else he’ll have to tell the principal.

They grumbled and headed back to their “stupid classes.”

Jack hung around the park for a while, saying hi to the people there, and took it easy.

He leisurely went back to his office, and, as he opened the door, he heard a quiet beeping.

He wondered where that was coming from until he discovered it was coming from his wrist – it was his new bracelet.

He pulled back the sleeve of his right arm to look, and that was when he saw it flashing.

As he was looking, the flashing got faster and faster, and then he felt that now-familiar feeling. He was morphing again.

He sighed.

When he felt the morphing was over, he sat in the high-tech chair (there was one at Allison’s, at the smarthouse, at GD and, of course, there was this one here in his office) and pressed the button.

The chair did its quick scan and beeped, and he stood up. He went to the bathroom to see this new version of him, and it was yet another sexy blonde. Yep, he was a blonde. Again. But this time, at least the hair was straighter and not as long.

But his uniform didn’t fit as well anymore. Dammit! It’s clothes again.

Sure, he could just keep on wearing the uniform, but it was a bit too tight – the buttons were about to pop off, and he felt the pinch of the pants on his stomach and waist. Nope, he needed to change.

His eyes went to the new uniform that Mary had sent over. Hmmm...

It was a different style. It was still predominantly khaki, but it had a chocolate-brown collar, brown epaulettes, brown flaps on the front shirt pockets and the pants were brown with a khaki stripe running down the sides.

This was hardly like his old uniform. Plus it was small. Smaller even than the current uniform he was wearing.

Then he noticed a printed note taped to the hanger.

“Dear Sheriff Carter,” the note from Mary said, “Like I thought might happen, we are completely out of the ‘khaki material’ for your uniforms, so we did the best we could with the material we had available. We used a super-spandex material we are currently testing. Notice that it has short-sleeves since we didn’t have much of it in khaki, and we used brown for the pants and some other details. The ‘super-spandex’ makes the uniform extremely stretchy so it will fit you regardless of your measurements. Please let us know if this works, and if you want us to make you more. Thanks!!”

There was also a “p.s.” – it seems the colors and style were totally within the Sheriff’s Office Operations Manual. Hmmm. He decided to check out the manual later.

Anyway, since he couldn’t walk around if he looked like he was about to pop his buttons, he decided to try the new clothes.

He noted that the new uniform did indeed fit, but it was extreeemely close fitting.

He decided to vamp in front of the mirror, take a picture and send it to Allison.

Allison sent him back a tongue-sticking-out emoji, and told him he was now a semi-clone of nurse Tricia Heller from Medical, and that makes Nurse Heller number seven.

But Jack wondered why he changed so spontaneously, and why shorter than nine hours. He didn’t feel any different, and he seemed fine. So he called Allison to ask.

Allison answered and said she didn’t know, but she suspected that her time estimate was probably just off, and that it probably meant that his body had metabolized enough food to build up his energy reserves to trigger the morphing.

Jack could barely follow but he nodded nevertheless.

“Since I got you on the phone now, can you pass by GD? We need your expertise.”

“’Expertise,’ huh?” Jack grinned.

“Shut up,” Allison laughed. “Just get here as soon as you can.”

So he left his office and crossed the street to his jeep.

“Jack!” someone called. Jack turned and saw Kevin.

“I dropped Jenna and Kimmy back home with the sitter’s and I decided to get a burger.”

“Kev...” Jack said wearily. “You know how your mom feels about you cutting class...”

“But, Jack, it’s just Basic Differential Calculus! It’s so boring, and I know all of it already!”

If it were any other kid, Jack would have just assumed he boasting, but this was scary-smart Kevin. He probably did know all of it already.

“That’s not the point, Kevin. Go and grab a burger, and then go back to Tesla. Okay?”

Kevin pouted. “Okay...”

“Promise?”

“I promise!”

“Okay. I’ll see you and the girls at home later. I have to go to GD and meet your mom.”

“Okay. See you later. And, Jack –“

“Yeah?”

“Looking good!”

“Ahhh, shut up,” he laughed. He got into his jeep and left for GD.

Seems Kevin has a crush on me, he thought. That’s worrying. He decided to tell Allison, but maybe later.

- - - - -

Jack got to GD in about twenty minutes, and went straight to Henry’s office to meet with Allison, Jo and Henry.

As he got in, Zane Donovan joined them and they talked things over.

The additional information was that Zane did find the chip that Dr. Connery replaced in Ross the Robot, but it was a total loss - being electrocuted like that basically wiped out all of the robot’s memory, and Zane only got useless fragments of the code in the erasable-programmable memory chip.

But Jo got the original chip from Dr. Connery, and Zane quickly copied the programming on that chip. Jo left them to surreptitiously return the chip (she volunteered to bring dinner to the roboticist).

While they waited for Jo to come back, Zane went through the code he copied from the chip.

“The chip seems to contain primary commands,” Zane said.

“Primary commands?” Jack asked.

“In layman terms, these are the main functions of a robot. Like for Andy, it’s protect the people of Eureka, follow the instructions of his superior, observe all traffic laws, et cetera.”

“Okay. What are Ross’s primary commands?”

“It’s not that simple,” Henry said. “It’s symbolic. Meaning to say, it depends on how the robot’s AI is designed. The instructions would be meaningless to anyone unless it uses a symbolic codec that can translate common-speech statements into equivalent code that the robot can understand. And the only robot that we know of that does this is Andy.”

“Well,” Zane said, “this one does.”

“What!”

“Yep. As best as I can tell, Ross uses a lot of the AI code that’s used in Andy.”

“Well...” Henry said a little red-faced, “Dr. Connery was one of the designers of the original Andy, after all...”

“Does that help us?” Jack asked.

“Hold on,” Zane said. He looked back and forth from the program he copied and the program fragments he recovered from Ross.

“Donovan?” Jack said, unable to wait anymore.

“I couldn’t fully understand the code I recovered since they’re just pieces. But since I know how it’s interpreted now, I can give you an educated guess. Sort of like trying to understand bits of conversation from context.”

“That’s good. When can you get us something usable?”

“A week? Four days at best.”

“Okay. In the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” Henry said, “we keep her in the isolation room, and we keep the robot locked down while my guys do some tests on it.”

“Four days, Henry?” Allison said. “Isn’t that a bit, you know, ‘cruel and unusual?’”

“Allison’s right,” Jack said. “We can’t hold her against her will. Unless we charge her with something.”

“Why don’t we,” Zane said.

“Zane!” everyone reacted.

“Sorry, sorry! It was just a thought.”

“We can’t do that,” Jack said. “We have no proof she did anything wrong. We only suspect she did.”

“But –“

“No – these are just theories at best. They aren’t definitive.”

“Not definitive yet,” Zane corrected.

“You’ll get us more information?” Jack said.

He nodded. “A week. Maybe five days. We can make it shorter if we had Fargo here to help me.”

“I can give Fargo a call. Or maybe Dr. Grant. I hear the two of them regularly keep in touch.”

“You have their numbers?”

“They gave them to me, but I’m only supposed to use them for emergencies.”

“Great, Jack,” Henry said. “You call them.”

“Okay. And, for now, I can legally hold Dr. Connery for forty-eight hours. But if we don’t get proof she deliberately caused that robot to do what it did, we have to let her go. Henry?”

Henry nodded. “Right. If we don’t have anything by then, I’ll declare the robot impounded, and we can continue checking out the robot, and Dr. Connery won’t be able to work on it for the duration.”

“Won’t the DoD complain?” Donovan asked. “Won’t they cancel the contract and demand the robot back?”

“That’s the weird thing, Zane,” Jo said as she came back. “They’re essentially ignoring what’s happening. I tried to get more information on the project, but I haven’t gotten anything more than what we already know now. Betcha after we update them again, they’ll just say ‘thank you.’”

“We need more information.” Henry said.

Jack nodded. “I’ll talk to Judge Harper and get her to issue a warrant so we can search her stuff. Maybe we can find something there.” Judge Harper was the county court judge for the town and county of Eureka. She was also the former pastor of the First Church of Eureka, but was now the judge of Eureka’s only court district. Good thing that Eureka had very few cases, which was because of the nature of the town itself, and because Jack was usually there to fix things before it got to the courts.

“That doesn’t make me feel too good,” Henry said, shaking his head, ”that we need to do that.”

“What choice do we have, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “You’re right. Anyway, let’s get this meeting over with so Zane and I can do our work.” Henry said.

So the meeting broke up. Henry and Donovan went back to Section Ten and the robot, and Jack and Allison decided to go home while Jo decided to stay and do some more research into the background of Dr. Connery’s project and wait up for Zane.

- - - - -

“That was a downer,” Jack said as they went to GD’s main parking structure.

“What do you mean?” Allison responded.

“I took your suggestion,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “Yes. I basically hung around town.”

“Yeah? How was it?”

“It was nice. People found it intriguing - you know, my morphing - but they were accepting of it.”

Allison chuckled. “Being in Eureka does that to people,” she said, and Jack understood. Impossible things happened too often that a man changing into a woman was a reasonable idea.

“Thanks for today, Allison,” he said and kissed her on the cheek.

Allison blushed at that. It felt just like the old Jack. But just different enough to be, well, better. How could it be better? Jack wasn’t Jack right now. He was more like a Jackie.

But it was still Jack, and it counterintuitively didn’t hurt that Jack was one of the better-looking women on Main Street now.

For whatever reason, his morphs weren’t exact duplicates, and, for whatever reason, the tweaks to the donor DNA just upped Jack’s looks.

Allison understood why Jack’s morphs were so fascinating to people – fashion model-type good looks coupled with the fact that it was Jack, dependable, brave and indispensable Jack, underneath it - the three recent events just proved to the chauvinists and misogynists (which, thankfully were very few in Eureka) that Jack was still Jack despite his new physical form. Allison mused that, maybe, this aspect gave him that kind of mystery or whatever exotic quality he now had that made him fascinating to her and many people.

Still, Allison couldn’t wait to get her Jack Carter back. But, if they didn’t get him back, Allison found that she didn’t worry as much as she thought she should.

She looked at this woman walking with her, her arm around her. Looking inside herself, she wasn’t finding it weird at all.

“Hey,” Jack said suddenly, “guess what?”

“What?”

“Kevin came to the office this afternoon.”

This afternoon!” Allison exclaimed, “Dammit! I thought we were done with him cutting classes!”

“I think we are,” Jack said. “I think this is about something else.”

“Well, what?”

“I think Kev has a crush.”

Allison didn’t understand. If Kevin had his eye on some girl in school, then why the class cutting?

“Who?” Allison asked.

“Me.”

Allison looked at Jack with round eyes. “What!”

Jack shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

to be continued in Episode 6: “Rampage!” Jan. 17, Thursday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, just had a pleasant, slow day – no new emergencies to take care of – a rare day for Eureka lately, especially for Sheriff Carter. And Allison and Grace were slowly closing in on the solution to Jack’s morphing.

Jack spent the day connecting with the folks of Eureka again, and getting them used to his almost daily transformations.

There was also a growing problem between him and Kevin, Allison’s oldest – it seemed that Kevin has a crush on the new Jack.

As for Henry, Jo and Zane, they also found a suspect for the culprit to the recent rampage of Dr. Connery’s robot – Dr. Connery herself.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

It was a couple of days now since Dr. Jennifer Connery’s robot, which she called “Ross,” tried to take over Global Dynamics. Only Jack and Andy’s actions helped put down the rampaging machine.

They had a suspect – Dr. Jennifer Connery, the creator of the robot. They knew she had replaced a chip in the robot’s head just before the robot went haywire, and was in the building in an area where she wasn’t supposed to be when it all went down, and was able to get past the blast doors between Section Ten and the rotunda area after they were engaged.

But despite their suspicions, they couldn’t find any other things to link Dr. Connery to it. So Jo did some research and made inquiries with her contacts in the DoD.

But it was like they never heard of the project. Those that did know about it said they thought the project had been canceled already.

Henry had to report the two incidents to the DoD, of course – it was the DOD’s project, after all - and was prepared for the DoD to pull the project out and take back the $100 million that they had already paid. But it was like the DoD didn’t care. All that the DoD said in reply, in fact, was to just keep them updated. It was weirdly suspicious.

Trying to understand what happened, Henry also did a thorough physical inspection of the robot, but he couldn’t find anything incriminating. He couldn’t understand why it happened.

At the same time, with warrant in hand, Jack and Andy went through Dr. Connery’s personal effects and equipment, but after going through everything, they found nothing as well – lots of equipment but nothing sinister.

Andy corrected Jack, and said that they haven’t gone through everything – they haven’t gone through the two cases of weapons he impounded when Dr. Connery arrived.

Jack agreed, and told Henry. Henry said he’d get right on it the following day.

The last remaining thing that they could do was left to Zane Donovan.

Zane was to try and decipher the robot’s so-called “primary commands.” By doing so, he’d be able to find out what the robot was being ordered to do. Was it really trying to barricade itself inside GD? And if so, why? Or was there even a purpose behind its actions? Maybe Dr. Connery was right, and that it really was an accident. Or did Jennifer really intend to barricade herself and her robot in? But if so, to what end?

They hoped that if Zane were able to interpret Ross’s primary commands properly, they’d be able to answer these questions.

But Zane was having trouble. So, with the help of Dr. Trevor Grant (he didn’t use that name anymore, of course), Jack contacted Douglas Fargo, the former director of GD, who was the person responsible for Andy, Jack’s own android deputy. If anyone can make sense of Ross’s programming, it would be him.

Fargo promised to be there in a couple of days.

As for Jennifer Connery, Jack and Jo Lupo were forced to let her go since they had no “direct proof” of any wrongdoing. Apparently, the chip wasn’t enough reason – and pressure from “somewhere” got the scientist free on bail (the judge didn’t say).

Even so, she still didn’t get access to her robot – Henry told her that they were still investigating. He said they’d be through with their investigation within the week and she might be given access to Ross then.

She threatened to complain to the DoD, but she never did follow up on her threat. Again, very suspicious.

So she just stayed in the house assigned to her, and waited for access to her precious robot.

- - - - -

Jack woke up next to Allison and stretched luxuriously. But he noted that Allison was still sleeping, so he got out of bed carefully so as not wake her.

He went to the bathroom and did his normal routine. By now, he knew that routine didn’t include shaving anymore, but in place of shaving, he now needed to dry his now-longer hair with the hair dryer.

As he dried his hair, he inspected his face.

He knew his current face was the slightly different imitation of Dr. Monica Belushi from the Eureka reforestation project. This one was a dark-haired beauty, as was his morph from the day before, the almost-duplicate of Dr. Kate Beckinsley from Medical, so they knew his being blonde wasn’t an intrinsic part of his morphing function, as was his morph being essentially Caucasian morphs, since he had also turned into almost-clones of Drs. Emmy Stone and Julie-Anne Huff: Emmy was an African-American while Julie was an Asian-American.

Jack now had eleven “morphs” under his belt, the EM waveforms for each recorded. With Allison and Grace’s computer mouse-like EM device, Jack could now morph into any of these eleven.

The girls and women who participated in the aborted Cloned Organs Project of Dr. Barrows by donating samples of their DNA eventually heard of what happened to Jack, and were extremely curious to see Jack turn into their clones (or near-clones), especially after Dr. Cameron started telling everyone about Jack changing into an almost-clone of his daughter, Dawn.

So the girls organized something that they called the “Jack Watch” – if Jack morphs and they find out, they’ll let everyone in their group know, especially the person Jack just turned into.

Allison and Grace calculated that Jack needed about nine hours in between morphs, but, with the unpredicted morph that happened to him when he turned into his Tricia Heller morph a couple of days ago, this proved there really was no time limit – they now thought his morphs could happen anytime. Still, they decided to not let Jack change too close to each morph, just to be safe.

Allison also said Jack needed to keep his pills - the pills that Jack can take to lower his blood sugar - handy. Jack now has a tube of them in his desk in his office, the glove compartments of the sheriff’s patrol vehicles, Allison’s car, Allison’s desk drawer in her office, the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and living rooms of both their houses, and he also kept a tube of it in his pants pocket at all times.

Anyway, it was time for his fourteenth transformation, and, potentially, his twelfth morph.

So, after breakfast, and the prerequisite tall glass of sugar juice, Jack sat down in the high-tech diagnostic chair.

With Jenna holding his hand and Kevin looking on, he waited for the change. Allison, with Kimmy in her arms, watched the screen on the back of the chair.

“Here it comes,” Allison said, and then she saw the spike in the screen, which meant that Jack’s pituitary did whatever it does to change Jack.

“There it goes!” Allison said.

After a few seconds, the buzzer sounded off.

“So?” Jack asked. “Who am I this time?”

Allison didn’t need her tablet and look at the pictures of the DNA donors to tell who, since she has seen this face before.

“You are now the semi-clone of Rebecca Roman. Again.”

“It’s a repeat?” Jack said, disappointed. “Darn...”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I wish it was your Jack Carter morph, too.”

“What if we try again?” He held up the empty glass.

“Jack, we don’t really know what changing so fast after just going through a morph will do to you.”

“But you and Grace said...”

“Yes, yes, but we don’t really know. Let’s be safe rather than sorry. Patience is a virtue, after all...”

“All right,” he said. He pulled Jenna close and gave her a kiss.

As usual, Kevin was looking at Jack with mouth agape.

“Kevin?” Allison said. “We talked about this.”

“I know Mom, but –“ he gestured to Jack.

“It’s still me here, Kev,” Jack said.

“I know, Jack, but –“ he gestured at him again.

“Just be cool, Kev.”

“This is so messed up.”

And then Jack’s phone started beeping.

“Carter,” he said, answering. “Hey, Henry. What’s up?” He listened to the phone for a bit. “Okay. I’ll be there.” He then hung up.

“What’s wrong?” Allison asked.

“It’s the robot again.”

- - - - -

Jack went upstairs to get ready, and looked through his available female clothes.

Jo used to live in the smarthouse years ago, but when she left, she forgot some of her clothes as well as a couple of her SWAT tactical uniforms. Jack put on one of Jo’s uniforms when he dealt with the robot before, and it was a right decision, given the firefight and everything.

He sighed. He decided to wear Jo’s remaining tactical uniform.

“I thought you might be doing that,” Allison said. She was at the doorway.

Jack shrugged. “Gotta be ready for anything,” he said.

Allison nodded her agreement. “Yes. Jo agrees, actually, and she gave me this.” She held out a black bodysuit, this time with long sleeves.

“What’s that?”

“Jo gave it to me a couple of days ago just in case you needed to wear her uniform again. She says this one may have sleeves long enough for you.”

Jack reluctantly took it. “It’s still a little small, though,” he said.

“Well, of course - you’re over half a foot taller than her. But you managed before.” Allison grinned at him, giggling.

Jack gave her a little moue of impatience and turned his back to her as he put on Jo’s clothes.

Allison was impressed that he seemed that comfortable around her, and was doubly impressed as he got ready as fast as his old self did. Among Jack’s morphs, she liked this one best. She looked on interestedly.

As Jack got dressed, he explained the reason: Dr. Connery went to GD early today, and was somehow able to get close to her robot. The robot was now in the hallway in front of Section Five and trying to get in. Jo had her people blocking the way and the robot seemed to be stopped for now. Jack’s going to see if he can help.

Jack finished getting ready, and the clothes were as tight as before since they were Jo’s, but since it was made out of that special material that stretched a lot as well as resisted tears, cuts or punctures, it fit, but it didn’t leave much to the imagination. He gave Allison a quick hug and a kiss, bussed the girls and high-fived Kevin.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m outa here!”

- - - - -

Jo and Andy met him.

“Thanks for coming, Jack,” Jo said. “So I see my uniform fits,” she giggled.

“Barely,” he said, squirming. “It’s like I’m wearing pantyhose everywhere.”

“Well, it looks good on you,” she grinned. She and Andy then briefed him on the situation as they climbed down the emergency access ladder going to the main corridor for sections two through fifteen.

Currently, the robot was cornered in the west side of the main corridor between Section Five’s main doors and the elevator going to Section One and the main rotunda. All of Jo’s people were deployed around Section Five’s doors and were currently keeping the robot at bay. Jo’s commandos would fire volleys at the robot, and the robot would lift one of its arms and the bullets would just ricochet off it. And that was the situation now. At least no one had been hurt yet.

Jack was ahead of Jo and Andy, and he dropped down onto the floor at the bottom of the tube.

He turned the handle, opened the airlock door and stepped out.

One of the commandos came over, saluted.

“Sheriff Carter!” he said.

“Good to see you again, Sergeant Dalton,” Jack said and shook his hand. “I take it the squad is here?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Dalton said and handed him what looked like a high-tech shotgun. He didn’t comment on the fact that Jack looked different from before and just nodded. He saluted Jo as well – “Ms Lupo,” he said – and jogged to the front of their line.

“What did you do?” Jo said, smiling. “I haven’t seen ole Ironsides Dalton act like that. You must have impressed him.”

“Nahhh,” he said. He walked to the front, and “his” squad – the squad that was with him when he took down the robot before - saluted him. He nodded in a friendly but serious way.

The other commandos continued firing, and Jack watched the action, trying to see if he could help somehow.

Suddenly, the robot stopped. It stood stock-still and pointed at Jack. It couldn’t properly point as its hands didn’t have fingers, and were more like mittens – a thumb and one paddle-type thing in place of the expected four fingers.

As it pointed, it made a kind of squeal-like sound, like metal screeching on metal, and ran back in what appeared to be fear, only to fetch up against the elevators and the far wall.

Frantically, it used its thumb to push the elevator button and the elevator doors slid open.

“Now, how does it think it can fit itself in that tiny elevator?” Jo commented.

Surprisingly, the robot did indeed fit itself into the elevator, and everyone looked at the robot in incredulity. It folded itself into a kind of brick shape that just fit into the elevator, and shuffled into it.

“Wow,” one of the commandos said. “Just like a transformer from the movies.”

“Shut up, Mick,” one of the others said.

“Sarge!” Jack called to Dalton. “Call your people upstairs! Clear the rotunda and the rest of Section One! Quick!”

Dalton grabbed his radio and started giving orders.

Jack rushed back up the emergency ladder, followed by Jo, Andy and some of the commandos, and came back out on Section One and the rotunda.

And they saw the robot with its arm on top of the shoulder of Jack’s deaf teenager friend, Ellie. It wasn’t really holding her – it just had its arm resting on her shoulder. But it did imply that the robot could hurt her if it wanted, and that it won’t, unless they did something.

Jack signed, “it’s me, Ellie – Jack.”

Ellie’s eyes grew big. She had heard of what happened to him, but it was the first time for her to see it.

“Be calm,” he signed, “Jo, Andy and I will get you out of this. But be calm, okay?”

Ellie nodded slightly.

The robot started making that squealing sound, and used its other arm and hand to point at Jack. It started backing up, pulling Ellie back with it. If it were a person, one would have assumed it was scared of Jack.

Jack turned to Andy and gave some instructions. He then turned back to Ellie.

“Ellie,” he signed, “Andy will distract the robot – he will run as fast as he can to the right of you and the robot. When the robot turns to look at Andy, I will signal you. When you see me sign, I want you to crouch down and then run towards me as fast as you can. Do you understand?”

Ellie nodded.

So everyone stopped, and the robot stopped backing up as well.

For a minute, nothing happened, and then Andy started running, faster than any normal person, and when he was nearest the robot, he feigned reaching out to it.

The robot responded quickly, and moved to swat him with his arm.

When his hand was off Ellie’s shoulder, Jack yelled, “Now, Ellie!” He also made “Y’s” with his thumbs and pinkies extended, and brought his hands up and down. It was the sign for “now.” Ellie dropped and then, while crouched, ran to Jack.

Jo and her commandos threw the same kind of nets Jack used before, and the robot was trapped again.

The commandos threw more of the nets - eight in total finally fully immobilizing it.

Henry came running. “Jack!” he yelled and threw something at him. Jack grabbed it out of the air. To him, it looked like an electric cattle prod, with two electrodes sticking out on the shock end. It was a riot shock prod from one of Jo’s people that Henry modified with a different power pack.

Jack turned Ellie over to Jo and ran to the robot. The robot saw Jack approach and squealed again. It tried to move and get away from Jack, but the nets didn’t allow it, and the squealing just became louder and more strident.

“Yeah, robot,” Jack muttered. “I’m here to kill you. Again.” He used the cattle prod and jammed it into the robot’s torso. The robot started shaking as streams of electric lightning started arcing through and around it.

“You don’t touch my friends,” he said in a controlled voice.

He jammed it again, and the robot squealed again. Jack kept it jammed against the robot until the robot stopped squealing and moving.

Sergeant Dalton ran up. “Sheriff!”

Jack handed the cattle prod to the commando. “Take this, sergeant,” he said and turned to help Andy. “No one hurts my friends,” he said under his breath.

He knelt down next to Andy and helped him to sit up.

“How are you, Andy?” he asked.

“The robot crushed my right arm, boss,” Andy said, “but I’m sure Dr. Deacon can fix it.”

“Good.” He helped Andy get to his feet, and Ellie cannoned into the robot and gave him a hug.

“Thank you, Andy,” Ellie signed. Andy looked to Jack and Jack translated for him.

“You’re welcome, little lady,” Andy said to Ellie, borrowing an expression he heard from an Andy Griffith show, before Henry had him brought to Section Ten.

“Good work, Jack,” Henry said.

“I’ll say,” Jo grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re one stone-cold bitch, Jackie!” she joked.

Ellie pulled on the sleeve of Jack’s bodysuit top, and signed a long message.

“What’s she saying, Jack?” Henry asked.

“Oh, just some personal stuff... nothing important.” But Ellie’s big grin and Jack’s blush gave them some idea what she said.

“Sure,” Jo said, “personal...”

“I didn’t know you could sign, Jack,” Henry said. “That’s amazing.”

“One of my best friends growing up was deaf, and I learned it because of him.”

Allison then came up.

“Jack!”

“Hey, Allison!” Allison gave him a hug, and then hugged Ellie. “Let me take this young lady for a quick checkup and I’ll see you all in Henry’s office later.”

Ellie gave Jack another hug and allowed herself to be brought to Medical.

- - - - -

Later, they were back in Henry’s office for yet another robot post mortem.

Security and CCTV footage confirmed that Dr. Connery did come in at around seven. Since she still had her ID and everything, and wasn’t carrying any weapons or anything, she was given full access. She went directly to Section Ten, and since it was early, no one was around except for the security person that was guarding the non-working robot. Dr. Connery showed some unusual strength since she was able to strike Jo’s ex-Marine commando on the jaw strong enough to break it and knock him out cold.

She then replaced the robot’s battery pack and manually switched it on. The robot started up right away, and Dr. Connery just ran out without waiting for anything else. Security footage showed her rushing to leave the building so fast that she had driven away at high speed before any alarm could be raised. No one knew where she was now.

Jo took responsibility for that, but, to be fair to her, she did everything right – they just didn’t count on Dr. Connery’s unexpected Manny Pacquiao skills.

Zane then said that the robot’s memory was totally randomized and he couldn’t understand how it could function much less do what it did.

“You’re sure about that, Zane?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” He pressed some buttons on his tablet and a projection of a diagram of Ross’s internals was displayed on Henry’s wall.

“See here and here?” Zane said, gesturing. “The main bus was completely toasted. If these memory chips were even still functional,” he pointed at a bunch of square-shaped memory chips, “they wouldn’t be able to send signals to the robot’s control systems at all.”

Jack nodded as if he understood when he clearly didn’t. Allison giggled. Clearly Jack was still Jack regardless that he was now a blonde hottie as well.

Grace came in.

“Hey, Grace,” Jack said. “How’s Ellie?”

She gave Henry a casual kiss and sat down beside Allison.

“Ellie’s okay, Jack,” Grace replied. “She was just shook up a bit, but she’s okay. I sent her to her dad.”

Jack nodded.

Henry didn’t hear much as he concentrated on the diagram. He stood and looked at it more closely.

“What about these,” Henry pointed at something else.

“Those are just servo and motor control chips,” Zane answered. “They just provide basic motor control.”

“If that’s correct, then why are they using the same kind of memory chips as these?” Henry pointed at the square chips Zane first pointed to. “Regular eproms would have been more than enough.” He pointed to the right-hand side of the board. “And I think this is a secondary bus.”

“Ohmigod!” Zane said. “Ohmigod, Henry, you’re right!”

“What?” Jack said.

“Henry pointed out that the chips Dr. Connery used there aren’t the kind that should be used there. It means that the robot had a backup set of command and memory chips: so, even if the primary set isn’t working, the robot was completely able to function. Just slap on a new battery pack and it would be completely functional.”

“Okay,” Jack nodded. “So, we now have an answer to the ‘how.’ How about the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ -”

“I can try to answer the ‘what,’” Jo said. “The robot was trying to get into Section Five – the section for military tech, right? It’s trying to access our military projects. The DoD doesn’t have full access to our records now, and since we’ve been doing projects for other countries and private companies, the DoD would be very interested in taking a peek.”

“Actually, you’re right, Jo,” Henry said. “The DoD has been after our stuff for a while. They even tried to do it via legal means, but it didn’t work. So I guess this is how they get their way.”

“What’ll we do, Henry,” Allison asked.

Henry waved that away. “Leave that to me, Allison. For now, let’s concentrate on this.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “That answers the ‘how,’ the ‘what’ and the ‘why.’ We need to issue a warrant of arrest for Dr. Connery. Jo?”

“Yes,” Jo said.

Jack nodded. “I’ll get the ball rolling and get the warrant. I’m gonna need some folks since it’s turning out to be more of a manhunt than anything else.”

“You’ll get them tomorrow.”

“Great.”

“Guess that’s it, then,” Henry said, and they broke up the meeting.

After a final kiss with Allison, he went back to their “townhouse,“ had a quick shower and changed into one of his more normal khaki uniforms, and got back to work.

He hoped Henry can fix Andy quickly, and hoped that they find Dr. Connery soon. He knew their troubles with Dr. Connery and her robot were far from over.

to be continued in Episode 7: “Sheriff’s Day Off” Jan. 19, Saturday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, was again called to yet another emergency – Dr. Jennifer Connery was able to get to her robot creation and re-activate it. The robot tried to break into Section Five, where Global Dynamics worked on their highly confidential military projects. Jack and Andy were able to stop the robot again, but Dr. Connery managed to escape.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

It was several days now since Dr. Connery disappeared, and Jack, Andy and the people that Jo assigned him were so far unable to find her.

Henry had informed the DoD of the third incident, and, therefore, per contract, Global Dynamics was exercising its right to void the contract for cause and to return all monies and materiel. The DoD countered and said that they would like to hire GD to find out why the robot ‘failed.’

Henry was a little confused at that – it was like the DoD was deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Instead of recognizing GD’s voiding of the original contract, the DoD just canceled the contract altogether, and said that all fees already paid were to be assumed as the DoD’s penalty fee for the damage caused by their robot.

And as Henry, Allison and the other directors tried to wrap their brains around that, the DoD then offered another contract – a cotract to discover what went wrong with the robot, with a fee of a hundred million.

GD’s lawyer, Oliver Babbish, was consulted over videocon, and he said it was the DoD’s very transparent way of insulating themselves from any liability.

“Does the new contract seem to be similar to the first one?” Oliver asked, “in terms of the basic objectives of the project, I mean.”

“Well, yes – assess the robot, find out what’s wrong, with the exception of actually fixing it...”

“I thought so.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We take the money and run, that’s what!”

“Ohhh...”

“Lemme massage the wording of their contract a bit and email it back to you, and you can send it back to them and say it’s take it or leave it. I’ll highlight the main changes to allow them a quick review.”

“And if they don’t like it?”

“Then you say sorry, and walk away. But you’ll see – they won’t say no.”

“If you say so, Oliver,” Henry said.

“How long is the contract for?”

“Same as the previous one – six months.”

“Hmmm. Twenty-four weeks. Okay.”

In an hour, Henry got the new contract back, and it required an up-front non-refundable eighty million signing fee, with a million falling due every week for six months, with the contract specifying a no refunds kind of deal, with GD or the DoD having the option of cancelling the contract at any time with one week’s notice.

The contract was skewed so much in favor of GD that it was almost laughable, but the DOD returned the contract, signed, in about an hour, but with one change – aside from Dr. Henry Deacon being named the project manager, Sheriff Jack Carter was to be given approval and veto authority over any aspect of the project. Babbish said that was again another way to insulate them from any responsibility if other incidents occur. Furthermore, there was no mention of any DoD or other non-GD personnel working on the project. In fact, the DoD was required not to interfere nor assign people to the project, other than as observers - again another way of insulating them.

All in all, if not for the financial side of it, the contract looked like one of DoD’s old work orders when GD used to be under their control. Henry had to chuckle.

If I could get a few more of these contracts, Henry thought, I could guarantee the solvency of GD and Eureka for the next couple of years.

- - - - -

As for Zane, he was indeed able to gather the Primary Commands of the robot intact, but he was having trouble interpreting them. It seems these commands didn’t use the symbolic codec that the first chips that they saw used.

Zane definitely needed help, and hoped that Douglas Fargo, the one in charge of creating the second version (which was the present version) of Jack’s android deputy, would get to GD soon.

As for Jo, she had also continued her investigations. She unearthed some classified documents that referred to a “Project Ross:” According to these documents, the project was about the creation of a robotic soldier. The name “Ross” was actually an acronym for “Robotic Super Soldier.”

Dr. Connery was indeed a part of the project, which was appropriate since She was an indisputable authority in robotics but, contrary to what one would assume, she was not the head of this “Project Ross.” Rather, it was Douglas Fargo’s favorite sparring partner in Area 51, Dr. Toby Bismarck that was the main scientist in charge. That, in itself, was something fishy.

She put a call in for Toby but, for some reason, Toby was unavailable. There was definitely something going on.

- - - - -

As for Jack, he had a couple of his own questions: first - why was it that the robot recognized him in the morph he was in? It was the first time for the robot to see Jack in his Rebecca Roman form. Henry said that the quality of the robot’s optics was very low compared to, say, Andy’s, so it probably wasn’t seeing things well enough for purely visual identification, but extrapolated it – a higher-tier AI function that only Andy and a few other robots had.

Second – why didn’t Jo’s commandos use the nets right away, and immobilize the robot? Henry said that it was his fault – given that there were no civilians in harm’s way, and that it was a stalemate at the time, Henry asked not to immobilize it yet so that he and Zane could observe it in action and get some clues about its instructions and objectives, and its operation-slash-behavior.

This made Jack a little angry, of course – the priority is always safety. Henry promised it won’t happen again.

Other than these two particular questions, Jack left it to the experts to suss out the mystery behind the robot.

- - - - -

It was a peaceful few days since that time when “Ross” tried to break into Section Five. Nothing more dangerous than an almost meltdown in one of the experimental power generation plants on Mount Von Braun, and the accidental escape of thirty-two invisible mice – offspring of the original eighteen mice from Frank Philips’ abortive invisibility experiment about eight years ago. Nothing unusual.

It was only by chance that Andy was able to find the last of the mice in GD’s ducting yesterday. Good thing Andy came equipped with infrared vision.

It seemed that everything had gone back to normal, or as normal as it could be, except that Jack was still a girl.

Jack had finally told Zoe, his daughter from Abbey, his first wife, what had happened, but once Zoe found out that he wasn’t in any danger, she didn’t really much care, but did say she was excited to see him in one of his transformations.

He did send her pictures of his past morphs, and he promised to send pictures immediately after each new one.

“Can’t wait!” Zoe said in her typical manner.

So everything was back to normal now. In fact, Jack and Allison felt confident enough that they decided for the family to finish their visit with Allison’s folks, and she and the kids left in the morning, leaving Jack to his own devices for a week.

Jack now had fifteen different “morphs,” the EM waveforms for each being dutifully recorded. And via the EM device that Allison and Grace created, he could now select from these fifteen when he does morph. Unfortunately, none of the fifteen were his old male form.

That’s why he was still allowing the random nature of his changes to happen, in the hopes that one of these new morphs would finally be his male Jack Carter morph.

In the past few days, he had turned into four dark-haired beauties and one blonde. Jack had looked at his “portfolio” – the file of the people who donated their DNAs to Dr. Barrows’ Cloned Organs Program, and was able to identify who he had turned into: Penny Cruz, the daughter of Dr. Pablo Cruz; Megan Foxworth, the niece of Dr. Grace Foxworth; Natalie Portley, the sister of Dr. Abbey Portley-Smith; and Dr. Anna Beatrice Barrows herself – the inventor of the EM device that started all this. Jack’s last morph, the only blonde in the five recent ones, was Melissa Benoit - the cousin of GD’s lone dendrologist, Dr. Leonardo. None of the morphs were exact duplicates, of course, but he expected that.

Except for Dr. Leonardo, all of the scientists were from Section Nine – not surprising since Dr. Barrows and the project were from Section Nine, so many of the volunteers would naturally be from there. Dr. Barrows volunteering was actually expected.

However, something was a little off, and Kevin was the one who was able to point it out, and Allison and Jack looked at each other. If they were in a cartoon, there would have been a light bulb over their heads.

What Kevin pointed out was that, with all due respect to the people that Jack had been morphing into, they weren’t all lookers. To be fair, they were pretty good looking, but when Jack morphed, for some reason, his morphs had been... tweaked and amped up. All of his morphs were good enough to be models. Well, according to Kevin that is.

And whatever Allison thought of that, she was a scientist first and foremost. And even if it took a teenager to point out the obvious, she wouldn’t belabor the point that they did miss something.

Clearly, the “tweaks” weren’t random. And if they weren’t, the only logical agent for the “improvements” was Jack himself, that his subconscious mind had somehow selected the “improvements.”

Things like the age, and the length of fingernails and state of the hair could be explained away by epigenetics, and the state they were in when the samples were taken, but the other tweaks were all Jack’s.

It was sad that they lost Doctor Barrows’ device, especially since they had no surviving record of its specifications, because the technology had such potential - an ability to clone people, and the ability to “tweak” them according to their specifications. The possibility of specially modified body parts held such tantalizing potential.

And because of the potential benefits to the world, the Cloned Organs Program was reinstated, and half of the people in Section Nine was reassigned to the reinstituted program, the first part of the new program being the reconstruction of Dr. Barrows’ device.

- - - - -

Allison had given Jack the formula for his “super juice,” which was just simply commercially available orange-flavored Tang with extra sugar.

An eight-ounce glass of Tang would usually have twenty-four grams, or six teaspoons, of sugar. Therefore, half a liter would have twelve. That was already too much, but Allison said that he’d need to drink half a liter of Tang, as well as add forty-eight more teaspoons of sugar.

Whether there would be any adverse effects of such a large amount of sugar to Jack’s system, Allison said no – according to the data from the chair, the morphing uses up between 958 to 962 calories, so the “super juice” was just the right ticket, and would be used up right away so there would be no adverse effects on Jack.

“But, Allison,” Zane interjected, as he listened in to her explanation, “Jack’s body would need time to metabolize the sugar he drinks. How come he changes with only about a minute or two after he drinks his ‘super juice?’”

“Ahhh, yes,” Allison nodded, “in normal people, sugar is absorbed in about twenty-five to thirty minutes, but you see, Zane, Jack’s modified system cuts this time in half, plus, his ‘magic pituitary gland’ actually uses what’s already in his bloodstream – whatever is absorbed in that minute before the morph would be more than enough to top up Jack’s blood sugar to kick-start the change, and the rest would just replace what’s used up. And as his system becomes more and more adapted to this process over time, this grace period will become even shorter.”

“Ahhh!”

As has been part of his morning routine for the past few days now, Jack made up a glass of his “super juice.” He drank the toe-curlingly sweet concoction, sat in Allison’s diagnostic chair, and switched on the sensors.

He then waited for the transformation, which, from past experience, would usually come in a minute or so after he drank his juice.

Soon, he felt the usual running tingle that started at the back of his head and neck, and spread down his spine. In moments it was over.

He looked down at his hands and noted that they still didn’t look like male hands. Sighing, he got up, did the necessary things to verify that it was indeed a new morph, recorded the new EM waveform in his EM device, and updated all the other chairs (there was one at the other house, his office, and Allison’s office in GD).

He then went to the bathroom, did the usual stuff, like showering and so forth, and picked a new outfit. Nothing fancy – just the appropriate underwear, a pair of black leggings, sneakers and a long-sleeved gray sweater. After all, he was just going to the smarthouse to get one of his spare uniforms – he had run out of clean ones, and the only ones left were at the smarthouse. One thing he needed to do was to get some more from Mary’s.

He sighed. As a girl, the one thing he noticed was that he seemed to generate a lot of laundry compared to before, especially since Allison would not allow him to wear something twice. He wondered if that was a rule all girls followed, of if it was just Allison.

He studied his new morph. Looking at his “portfolio,” he noted that he was now the near twin of one of GD Medical’s nurses - a Nurse Rose Huntington-White. Jack’s new Rose morph seemed to be as slim as his Taylor Sweets morph, but this one had longer and straighter ash-blonde hair, and very red and pouty cupid’s-bow lips, sort of like a kewpie doll’s. He bet his new look would go over well with Kevin and his friends.

When he was all set, he went to the front of the house and then belatedly remembered Allison took the car, and he had neglected to bring either the sheriff’s patrol jeep or the patrol car. So he texted the problem to Andy.

Since Andy said it’d be about five minutes before he arrived, Jack decided to sit on a boulder behind the house and look at the view as he sipped sugarless tea from his favorite mug.

Over the years, Jack had fallen in love with the town, and loved to look at the view, especially in the mornings when there’s still a slight touch of fog and the sleepy yet wonderfully-peaceful Oregon back-woods vibe that was especially evident during the early morning and the late afternoon.

He failed to hear Andy’s arrival, and only noticed when Andy tapped his shoulder.

“Hey, Boss,” Andy said, smiling. “Your chariot has arrived.”

Jack appreciated Andy’s attempts at humor, and, in truth, he’d been getting better at it. Jack smiled at Andy’s efforts.

“Hey, Andy,” he replied. “I’m ready. Let’s go!”

- - - - -

Jack had decided to stay in the smarthouse for the duration, and brought the few things he needed.

Sarah, the AI that ran the smarthouse, was happy that he would be staying, at least for a while, and had the house ready.

Jack dropped his things in the bedroom, picked a uniform and got ready as quickly as he could since they were running late already, but it turned out he didn’t really need to. The day seemed to continue to be a slow day. Sure, there were things that needed to be done, but nothing major.

For example, there were a couple of out-of-towners that had stumbled over Eureka, and decided to drag race on Main Street. Too bad for them - they were up against Jack and Andy, and their GD-modified patrol vehicle, so the two kids were apprehended quickly, and were charged with speeding, ignoring traffic ordinances, endangerment, a DUI and a drunk and disorderly.

That meant Jack’s prison cell would have a couple of “guests” for a day, as they waited for their arraignment.

Jack also had to cite a couple of businesses for failing to follow some ordinances: the corner charging station and Callie’s dry cleaner’s had forgotten to charge people for their services again - all basic service businesses in Eureka were 100% subsidized and the people who run them didn’t really need to charge their patrons anything. But they’re required to charge a token amount and therefore allow the town government to track business performance, for statistical ananlysis. Regularly citing these people was one of his more boring but regular chores.

Jack also had to answer a couple of domestic disturbance calls. Though it wasn’t his job, he usually ended up mediating between the couple arguing, and more often than not, he would usually clear up the disagreement, and it rarely ended up progressing any further.

He also had to answer a couple of other calls which were not much different, except the arguments involved the use of high-tech-sounding words and a lot of esoteric talk. Over time, Jack had learned to filter all of this out and get at the heart of the arguments, and despite IQs higher that 140, Eureka’s citizens were just like regular people, and Jack was an expert at dealing with people.

It was a very long day but, paradoxically, it wasn’t really so tiring. Whatever these morphs had done to him, there was one thing he learned: being a cute girl really did have its advantages, as most people bent over backward to be more cooperative rather than be bitchy. Jack laughed to himself.

In fact, he thought of the day like a day off.

His last call for the day was actually laughably cliché – Ellie’s neighbor had lost her cat, which was currently trapped up a tree, so Jack got it down, and he had a pleasant time chatting with his young friend – he was one of the few that Ellie found easy to talk with because Jack was fluent in signing, and they eventually became friends. Ellie had an exciting bit of news: she was just told she was finally old enough and would be getting her permanent ear implant next week. Jack congratulated her and promised to visit after she had her operation.

His last stop for the day was his semi-regular stop at Café Diem, and have dinner. Vincent, Café Diem’s chef and proprietor, not to mention a michelin-star chef, world-class food scientist, culinarist and molecular gastronomist, knew Jack enough by now that, just by looking at him, Vincent knew what he’d like and never bothered to ask anymore.

Tonight, Vincent looked at the sheriff. Despite being a girl now, Vincent could still see the person underneath. Tonight, Jack seemed to be a bit tired and hungry, so Vincent got him a nice steak and potatoes – half-order only, though, given Allison’s instructions to him, plus a large salad. Vincent was pretty sure Jack won’t finish the salad but it was his way of encouraging Jack to eat healthier.

Café Diem was a bit different tonight – there were more people than normal. Jack’s fan club - what was rapidly becoming known in town as the “Jack Watch” - was in. Tonight there was about a dozen of them.

The girls who participated in the aborted Cloned Organs project of Dr. Barrows who donated samples of their DNA heard of what happened to Jack. They were very curious to see Jack’s morphs, especially after Dr. Cameron started telling everyone about how Jack morphed into an almost-clone of his daughter, Dawn.

So they got together and formed a sort of club, watching Jack turn into their almost-twins. Some felt a little jealous since Jack’s morphs looked so much better than they did, but they were all still curious. The current thing they were now into was to compare Jack’s morphs to the real thing, and were always hoping to meet Jack and get pictures or talk to him.

Their “clubhouse” was in Dr. Cameron’s garage, where Dawn, Jack’s first morph, organized club activities.

It was in the clubhouse-slash-garage where they had pictures of Jack on the walls, and where they kept statistics and other details about Jack’s morphs in large paper binders (they had all this in digital, too, of course, but Dawn felt it would be more fun to have paper-based books and binders in the clubhouse).

Dr. Cameron didn’t stop his daughter – Dawn was quite shy and this club provided a way for her to socialize. Besides, all the data that her club gathered was useful to him and the people of Section Nine, as well as with GD’s COO. It was also his way of getting some brownie points with her: GD’s COO just happened to be Dr. Allison Blake, Jack’s spouse... errr, wife.

Anyway, tonight, Dawn was in Café Diem, as well as nine other like-minded ladies, and excitedly chatted up Jack, or Jackie as they preferred to call him.

They also noted his new morph and Dawn, who had already memorized the pictures of all the DNA donors, declared it to be Rosie Huntington-White, one of the nurses at GD Medical. She rapidly dialed on her phone and called Rosie up, and Rosie said she’d be there in five minutes.

“Don’t let Jackie leave!” she exclaimed, and hung up.

Dr. Cameron had lectured his daughter about taking Jack’s pictures, and to only do so if Jack gave permission – something Dawn told everyone as well. But Jack was game, and said it was okay. Immediately, there was a flurry of flashes and clicks, and Jack found the camera flashes literally blinding.

“Girls, girls!” Vincent exclaimed. “Enough! Stop that, and allow the sheriff to finish her dinner in peace.” Jack didn’t bother to correct Vincent and just nodded his thanks.

Chagrined, the girls stopped and apologized, and left Jack alone. And though they only scattered to individual tables or sat two stools away from him at the counter, they left him alone.

Of course, with all the sidelong glances and the big grins they sent his way, he could hardly enjoy Vincent’s excellent filet mignon steak au poivre. It was just as well that it was a half-steak.

He sighed.

Soon, a girl, still in a GD nurse’s uniform rushed in and went straight to him.

“Ohmigod!” she exclaimed. “It’s true!”

Jack turned around and confronted the real Rosie Huntington-White.

- - - - -

It was a kind of relief to be able to go back home to the smarthouse. Those girls from his “fan club” just took it out of him, but it was quite flattering to have all those women almost fawning over him. He was sure the few men in the café resented it a bit, but not by much since he was hardly a rival, being a girl and all.

By the end of the evening, everyone was calling him Jackie, and he surprisingly didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would.

Before leaving for the smarthouse, he passed by the office and told Andy to pass all of the day’s paperwork to him. Andy took the lion’s share of the fieldwork today, anyway, so Jack thought might as well take care of the day’s paperwork. Fair’s fair. Andy gave him the folder, told him that he will take care of their prisoners tomorrow, and wished him good night.

He hadn’t noticed his bracelet’s crystal line had become red an hour ago, and as he arrived at the smarthouse, the red line had started to blink.

Oh, no! he thought.

It started blinking faster and faster. Jack was in such a rush to get to the chair, he didn’t even bother to have the lights turned on.

He knew he didn’t need to be sitting when he started to morph (he knew he had a few minutes after morphing). Even so, he thought it would be helpful to have more sensor readings while he was morphing.

He sat down on the diagnostic chair, switched it on and waited for the morph to happen.

After the odd tingling had faded and the buzzer sounded, he got up. He checked. Yes, it was yet another new morph, and after consulting his “portfolio,” he identified it as being Dr. Alexandra Ambrose, one of two non-Eureka volunteers. Dr. Ambrose was a consulting geneticist from the Area 51 labs, helping out Dr. Barrows at the time.

Oh, well, Jack thought, disappointed that it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph.

He sighed, took off his clothes and headed for the shower.

He sighed again and headed off to bed.

So ends my day off, Jack thought.

to be continued in Episode 8: “Fargo’s Back!” Jan. 22, Tuesday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In fact, having to meet up with his new fan club, “Jack Watch,” was more strenuous.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

It was a Saturday, and he had the morning off. But without Allison or the kids, he wasn’t too excited about the weekend, and thought of doing some paperwork instead, thereby giving Andy a little break from red tape.

Though he knew Andy, his android deputy, didn’t ask for it nor need it, he woke up early nevertheless to work on it.

He had his breakfast, and asked Sarah to prepare his “super juice.”

Might as well get it over with, he thought. He drank the juice, sat down in the special diagnostic chair and switched on its sensors.

After a few minutes, he finished morphing and the buzzer sounded. He checked and it wasn’t a new morph. He had changed into his Taylor Sweets morph again.

He wasn’t too disappointed, though. He knew his Jack Carter morph would happen eventually. He just wished it was now.

Anyway, he took a quick shower, changed into better fiiting clothes, and knuckled down and started on his paperwork.

- - - - -

In a few hours, he had finished everything.

Ahhh!, he thought, time for some lunch!

Before he could ask Sarah, his phone started to beep with a text message. It was Andy. He said he had taken care of their “prisoners’” paperwork and they pled guilty to all the charges in front of Judge Harper. They dutifully paid all the fines, accepted the sentence of six months’ probation and community service, and the suspension of the driver’s license for six months. Andy was now bringing them to the town’s impound yard to pick up their car, and then he’ll be escorting them out of town.

Jack sent a text message back, thanked him and said he’ll see him later in the afternoon.

He noticed another text and clicked on it.

He smiled delightedly. It was Douglas Fargo, texting that he was arriving, with Holly Marten. Jack called Henry and Jo, and suggested having a sort-of get-together lunch in Café Diem, and he started getting ready.

Dressed casually in a long-sleeved blouse and vest, short skirt and cowboy boots (something that Jenna had said was a cute outfit), he was off.

Less than twenty minutes later, he parked in front of his office, dropped off the paperwork and proceeded to Café Diem.

There, he gravitated to the nosiest table, with about a dozen people surrounding it.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone crash?” he said, and everyone stopped and looked at him.

“Jack!” Henry said and shook his hand. “Fargo –“

Dr. Douglas Fargo, the ex-director of GD stood up and looked at Jack with mouth agape.

“Sheriff Carter?” he said unbelievingly. “Is that you?”

“It sure is!” Jack said, and gave Fargo a bone-crushing hug. He then turned to his companion, Dr. Holly Marten.

“Holly!” Jack exclaimed and gave her an equally enthusiastic hug.

Both were, to say the least, surprised, but were swept along by Jack’s and everyone else’s enthusiasm.

It had been at least five years since Jack and the others had seen the two, and it was a joyous reunion, even with the strangeness of Jack’s morph.

- - - - -

After a while, the crowd thinned out, leaving Fargo and Holly alone with Jack, Henry, Jo and Grace.

Grace had been giving Holly an examination, and commented that she was as healthy and normal as anyone she’s examined.

Holly blushed and thanked the doctor.

Henry apologized but he brought everyone back to the reason Fargo was there. He quickly briefed the two about what’s been happening, and showed them his tablet with all the scans he and Zane had made of the robot and its internals. Jo then told them about what she’s been able to dig up.

Holly shook her head. “That’s pretty weird,” she said, “even beyond Eureka’s standards.”

“I know, right?”

“But how sure are you that this ‘Project Ross’ is the same as this one?”

“I’m not,” she said, “but it’s the safe bet.”

“You say you can’t contact Toby, Jo?” Fargo asked.

“No. And I did my best.”

Fargo nodded. “Then I guess we need to decipher the robot’s command set on our own.”

“That’s what Zane has been trying to do,” Henry said. “Originally, he thought that the robot ran on symbolic instructions, that it used a symbolic codec similar to Andy’s, which translated robot code to common-speech statements. That was, after all, how the robot’s primary memory chips were set up.”

“But these command chips weren’t working anymore because the primary bus was damaged?” Fargo continued. “Then how did these backup chips connect to the robot’s systems?”

“Only the upper block of the bus was damaged. These chips were connected to the other side of the bus.”

“Other side? You mean the left side?”

“Yes.”

“Then did Zane transpose the signals so they’d go into the bus reversed?”

Henry looked at Fargo. “Ohmigod... Fargo, you’re a genius!” He turned to Jack.

“Jack, we’ve got to get back to GD! Fargo’s discovered how to decipher the robot’s commands!”

“He did? How?”

“Let’s just say we just needed to look at the problem from the other side.”

Jack only half understood them, but he nodded nevertheless. “Then let’s go!” he said.

- - - - -

After an hour of working, with Fargo, Holly, Zane and Henry talking in some very fast and undecipherable computereze, Jack knew he wasn’t helping. He said goodbye and said he’ll meet up with everyone later. Jo and Grace also decided to go back to work as well.

As Jack walked back to his jeep, he thought he’d do some patrol work, maybe give Andy a little break. He was sure Andy would appreciate spending some time with Sarah.

For whatever reason, his smarthouse’s AI and his android deputy were in a “relationship.” Henry said to not worry about it. After all, Sarah (which was short for “Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat”) and Andy were both AIs, and as such, had personalities and identities, as well as the ability to think for themselves. And if these “people” found it within themselves to fall in love with each other, what could he do? And should he even do anything? Did he have a right to interfere given that these were “people,” too?

The Sarah and Andy had been in this relationship for over five years now, but it had not progressed further. But how could it progress beyond the way it was now? Jack thought. There can’t be any children, and there’s no “growing old together” here. Maybe this was all there was for these two.

For Jack, that was a little sad, actually. So any time that he could give them together time, he would, and he didn’t care what these “people” did when they were together. He owed them that much.

“Besides,” Henry said, “you probably feel a bit like a father figure to both.

“Hey! No judgment here. They were both made, by design, to respond to you and to follow you. Not blindly, of course, but with all things being equal, these two would follow you through hell and back. They can’t help it. But you’re human. You feel loyalty to them, and you feel close to them.

“You weren’t designed to be objective. No human is, really. So no judgment. But you have to know it and accept it. And know that neither I nor Allison nor Jo nor anyone else is judging, nor do we nor anyone else have the right. And besides, we like them, too.”

Henry slapped him on the back that time to buck him up. He remembered it well.

No judgment...

He picked up his radio’s mic.

“Hey, Andy,” he said, “you there?”

“I’m here Boss,” Andy said. “I just saw our two juvenile delinquents drive out of town.”

“Juvenile delinquents?” Jack laughed.

“I thought it a reasonable label, “Andy said. “They are both eighteen, after all.”

“True,” Jack agreed. “Hey, listen, I thought I could take charge for the rest of the day, and you can take off? What do you think?”

“I appreciate it, Boss,” Andy, “but I don’t need time off.”

“I know that, but it’s a Saturday, and I’ve been slacking off for the past week. I think I owe you for covering for me.”

“No, you don’t, Boss. It’s...”

“Hey, since I’m not in the smarthouse, Sarah will be all alone. I think she could use some company.”

Andy paused. “Okay, Boss. Thank you...”

Jack grinned. “I’ll see you guys in the smarthouse later.”

“See you, Boss.”

He switched off, proceeded to start on one of his random patrols, and put his radio on standby for any incoming calls - whether phone, video, intercom, email, text or voicechat (one of the bennies of being the sheriff for Eureka and GD was all the high-tech equipment).

But after doing one circuit, he felt it safe to finish off the day at the office.

When he got back, he found several boxes on his desk. Apparently, Pilar had been shopping for him again. There were four big ones this time, plus about a dozen shoeboxes on the floor. He thought he got his credit card back from Pilar already, so how did she buy all this?

“Dammit, Pilar!” he mumbled, and sat down. “My poor credit card...” When he was sitting down, the pile of boxes was higher than him.

So he stood up again to put them on the floor. On the topmost box was an envelope with a letter inside – it was from Mary, of Mary’s Uniforms and Fashions, an establishment about six doors away from Jack’s office.

Mary’s Uniforms and Fashions supplied the uniforms for GD and all the businesses in Eureka, as well as performed the main prototyping and research for GD’s now-burgeoning garment, fabrics and clothing “business.” Mary’s produces much of the cutting-edge fabrics and clothing currently standard in GD, such as all their fireproof, water-proof, chemical-proof, bulletproof and other specialty clothes for their lab, EMT, SWAT and other personnel. Even Jack and Andy’s uniforms are actually sourced from them. And per their plan, they would soon be in limited production for outside commercial sales – hopefully another revenue stream to help keep Euraka afloat.

But more than that, Mary’s also produces a lot of the usual off-the-shelf and ready-to-wear clothes, including their own equivalents of high-fashion-brand attire, for the town’s residents. Out of the four places one could purchase clothes in town, Mary’s was by far the most popular. That sounded impressive, but Eureka was still a small town, so the shop probably only has about ten walk-in customers in a day.

Anyway, according to the note, Allison had approached them and explained the clothing situation Jack was facing, and asked if they could produce clothes that would fit him regardless which of his morphs he turns into.

They knew about the problem already, of course, because of the times Jack went to them to get new uniforms. They had, in fact, made one uniform that was designed to be a fit-anyone uniform, the one he first wore when he turned to his morph of Nurse Tricia Heller from GD Medical.

So they made a whole wardrobe using materials similar to the “super-spandex” they used for that one. And this even included things like underwear, lingerie, socks and stockings. They even designed a set of shoes that could sort of stretch as well. Regardless whether he ended up with a women’s shoe size six or a size twelve, the shoes would all fit when he adjusted the small mechanical control that was on the inner side of the heel of each shoe.

Mary had actually consulted Pilar Reed about the designs and styles to use, asking her help in selecting them from the various high-fashion catalogs and patterns that they had access to. After all, Pilar was the closest to a fashion expert that they had at the moment. (Jack sighed – he was going to end up being as much of a clothes horse as Pilar, or his daughter Zoe.)

So in the four big boxes, and the dozen shoeboxes, was a complete wardrobe, which would fit him regardless of which morph he turns into, from casual to sexy, from sleepwear to exercise, from sporty to formal, or from stuff to wear around the house or stuff to wear to a boardroom meeting.

Jack looked at all of the boxes of his clothes. He felt a bit sad. That Allison whad all this prepared for him sort of implied that she didn’t have much hope that he could return to normal. That idea both scared him and made him sad.

There has to be a way, Jack thought. I don’t know if I can keep on being like this.

He thought to try morphing again. Maybe he’d be lucky this time.

He went to the office’s cupboard where he kept supplies like coffee, coffee filters, cups, saucers, biscuits, creamer, sugar, bottled juice drinks and a secret stash of his favorite pork rinds.

Jack got a tall glass, a teaspoon, a packet of Tang and the sugar jar.

He started mixing up his usual “super juice,” and took his time to dissolve the sugar and the juice powder. In fact, he ended up needing to transfer it all into another bigger tumbler to actually dissolve it all.

He sighed and sat in Allison’s high-tech diagnostic chair.

Instead of his drinking the syrupy juice in one big gulp, he decided to sip it as he looked at his reflection in the mirror that he could see through the open bathroom door.

He looked quite pretty, he thought in a melancholy way, and he contemplated the possibility that there was no way back, and he would have to live out the rest of his life this way.

If it was just him, he could probably take it. But there was Allison and Zoe, and Kimmy, Jenna and Kevin. It brought to mind the fact that he and Allison hadn’t made love since he first morphed. He didn’t know if he could stand it if that was a permanent thing.

He took a sip, and contemplated that some more. He hadn’t even tried to... explore, yet. It felt wrong somehow. But maybe he just needed a paradigm shift. Could he even?

And could Allison shift paradigms, too? Could she even contemplate him being her sexual partner now?

Truth be told, Allison and the girls, even Zoe (although he had only spoken to Zoe by phone and video – they had yet to have their usual father-daughter get-together) seemed to have accepted the change, and everything was, by and large, the same, save for the fact he and Allison haven’t done it for a while. In fact, the girls seemed to like the new Jack – it was like having a daddy and a second mommy wrapped up in one. They were actually more touchy-feely with him now, and he liked that. Allison, too, actually.

But then there was Kevin.

Kev was obviously doing his best to adjust, for the sake of Allison and for Jack’s sake, too, actually. But for a teenage, almost-adult boy, Jack could sympathize with Kev. Being around a constant parade of different gorgeous women, and all of them his stepfather – Jack understood. So he didn’t bother Kev too much. He was actually proud of him for being able to conduct himself in a gentlemanly way. Well, almost, he thought, laughing. That deserved another sip.

He supposed, if he had to, he could live this way forever, and he thought his family could, as well, although he thought it likely that it would end in a divorce for him and Allison – not the bad kind, to be sure, but a divorce nevertheless.

I guess I could stand that, he thought, but it hasn’t come to that, yet.

With that, he finished off the last of his juice, praying that this time he’ll morph back to Jack Carter. He gave the cute blonde in the mirror a smile and a wink, and sat back in the chair.

He switched the chair’s sensors on and waited for the change, and in a few minutes it happened.

Nothing major really – he was already used to it by now. And when the buzzer went off, the first thing he did was look at his hands – something he did reflexively by now.

They weren’t his hands. They were still a girl’s hands.

He looked at the mirror. Yes, it was indeed another girl.

- - - - -

Dutifully, he updated the other chairs by triggering the update function, and updated the EM device as well. He looked at the “portfolio” and identified that he was now the near-clone of Dr. Emily Rosewater, one of Mary’s people in her shop, and a chemical engineer.

Jack’s Emily morph was now his nineteenth, at least according to the EM device’s counter. Too bad it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph.

He still had twelve morphs so he kept his fingers crossed. Actually, he had eleven more morphs – there were eleven more people that had donated their DNA whose morphs they haven’t seen yet. Allison and Grace were just assuming that a Jack Carter morph makes it twelve, but Jack knew there wasn’t any assurance of that.

Still, Jack resolved not to lose hope until he’s gone through all his morphs. So, until then...

His phone beeped with a new text. It seems Henry wants another confab first thing tomorrow, and he was asking Jack if he could call Allison back again.

Jack frowned but it wasn’t like Henry would do this on a whim. Fargo must have unearthed something big to warrant him asking Allison to come back.

Jack looked at his watch – it was almost five in the afternoon, and to get Allison back within the day, Allison will have to fly back.

So, Jack, with approval from Henry, booked a chartered business jet to bring Allison home. That means Allison would be back within two or three hours.

Jack then sent a text to Allison, explaining the situation. She texted back that she’ll be leaving the kids with Marcus and her folks, and will get to the airport ASAP.

Jack sent back a reply, and said he’ll just meet her at the house later.

As he tried to get comfortable in the diagnostic chair, Jack had to unbutton his shirt. Seems his Emily morph was not as slim as his Taylor morph. He got busy bringing his new wardrobe into his jeep, but he could only fit in half.

So he brought half of the shoeboxes and two of the big boxes back to the smarthouse. He then went back to the office and brought the rest back.

He then spent the next hour hanging all of his new clothes up and putting away his new underwear and shoes.

Surprisingly, it was hard work. But at least it was done. With all the clothes, he ended up taking over the guest room. But that was okay, he thought – they didn’t need a guest room in the smarthouse anymore: they had the other house for that.

He decided to take a quick shower and maybe pick something from the new stuff to wear.

As he finished his shower, his phone beeped – it was Allison texting that she was just landing, and should be home in a while.

As Jack read the text, an idea started to form. Knowing Allison, she’ll probably stop over at Café Diem before heading home, and grab a smoothie, a “vince-spresso” or maybe Vince’s version of Boba Tea.

Jack decided to surprise her and meet her at the café.

From the new clothes he just hung up, he picked a semi-casual blouse, blazer, slacks and medium pumps – stuff that seemed more appropriate for the office. And, as promised, the clothes did indeed fit her, though it was a little snug, especially the underwear, but not uncomfortably so.

He assumed that would be the case for most of the other clothes but he didn’t mind it much – it was better than buttons popping. And his morphs looked dynamite in form-fitting clothes.

He then spent a bit of time blow-drying and brushing her now-strawberry blonde hair. He didn’t bother with makeup, though he did put some gloss the way he saw Zoe do it, and went out.

- - - - -

He then went to the café, parking his jeep in his usual spot in front of the sheriff’s office.

He waved to Vincent and, acting like he didn’t know him, Jack ordered a cup of coffee and a biscotti.

So he sat at the counter waiting for Allison.

Eventually, Allison arrived. Jack saw that she had gotten a ride from the neighboring town’s taxi service, and came in with just a small carry-on.

“Hi, Vince,” Allison said. “Can I get something cold to drink? It’s been a hell of a plane ride.”

Vince nodded and came back with a large milk-colored drink with a straw. Allison plopped down on the chair right beside Jack. Jack smiled at Allison in a friendly sort of way, like a friendly stranger would at someone, and nodded.

Allison smiled back and took a sip of her shake.

“Back so soon?” Vince asked. “Didn’t you just leave?”

“I know,” Allison smiled tiredly, “but Jack called. Henry wants to meet tomorrow about something important, Jack says.”

“Oooh! It’s probably connected to Fargo being here.”

Allison’s eyebrows shot up. “Fargo’s back in Eureka already? Wow!”

“Yes. He arrived this afternoon, with Holly. I’m surprised Jack didn’t tell you.”

Allison shrugged. “It’s my fault. I told Jack not to call unless it’s an emergency.”

At that point, Jack cleared his throat.

“Sorry for eavesdropping,” he said, “I take it you’re a local?”

Allison looked at the friendly stranger. “Yes, you could say that,” she replied.

“Well, I’m just passing through town. My name’s Emily, by the way.” He stuck his hand out.

“I’m Allison.” She shook the proffered hand. Allison gestured to Vince. “That’s Vincent. He runs the café.”

Jack shook Vince’s hand as well, still acting like he was just a friendly stranger.

“Pleased to meet you,” Jack said. I was hoping to get some directions?”

“Sure.” Allison looked at the girl. She was tall for a girl, and very pretty. She seemed familiar but Allison couldn’t match the face with a name.

“I’m supposed to meet someone for a date here.”

“Ahhh. Well, what’s the name?”

“His name’s Jack Carter? We were supposed to meet earlier but I was late.”

Allison looked at the girl, with large, shocked eyes.

“You have a date with Jack Carter?” Allison asked. “Are you sure you have the name right?”

“I think so. He’s supposed to be the sheriff around here.”

Allison looked at the girl with some hostility. She couldn’t believe Jack would do something like that. And then it dawned on her.

“Jack, you dirty...” Yes - he looked like one of the pictures from the file.

Jack couldn’t hold it in anymore and exploded in laughter.

“Oh, if you could only see your face!” he said, and continued to chortle.

Allison’s anger was slowly climbing, but Jack gave her a hug, and a kiss on the cheek.

Vince and everyone in earshot started laughing and chuckling, not in a mean way, but more like laughter at someone falling for an April fool’s joke.

Allison’s anger and embarrassment slowly melted away. Only Jack could ever do that with her. She answered his hug and kissed him back on the cheek.

“You stinker,” she said with a giggle.

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, had been thinking if this current situation that he was in – his constant morphing into different women – was going to be his new normal. What about his relationship with Allison, what about his work and his career? What about the kids?

As for the present danger of the robot, Douglas Fargo and Holly Marten paid them a visit in order to work with them and help figure out what the robot really was. And it seemed that this had already paid off – right off the bat, Fargo was able to identify and fix Zane’s main bottleneck in deciphering the robot’s commands.

After a few hours of work with Fargo, Henry called Jack to tell Allison to come back from her vacation – he was organizing a meeting for the following day. So Jack called Allison to come back, and when Allison arrived, Jack played a trick on her, and everyone had a laugh.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

Jack woke up, about an hour ahead of the alarm, and he found that he and Allison were spooning, with him as the back spoon. He supposed, because he was so much taller, it was the natural position to be in. But like the past few days, that was all they did - spoon. When someone says that he and Allison ‘slept together,’ it was the literal truth – as in it was just sleep, and it just happened to be in the same bed.

Jack thought it wasn’t so bad, actually. He was all for foreplay, but it was like it was foreplay all night. It was frustrating, of course, since it never got further than that. But in truth, it wasn’t that frustrating. Jack wondered, could it be girls like foreplay better than boys? And since he was physically a girl...

And Allison seemed to be more responsive this time, too. Sometime in the night, she sleepily mumbled that she thought they should do it, but Jack thought she was just talking in her sleep. So he just acted like he didn’t hear anything, and pretended he was fast asleep.

He would think to himself later that he wouldn’t even know how to do it if they did try. He wasn’t clueless, of course, but he doesn’t really do... unconventional things.

Jack got up and started getting ready. He got a text that said Henry, Zane and Fargo had Andy in the labs so that they could compare his systems to Dr. Connery’s robot, so Jack decided to take the first half of the morning shift, which was usually Andy’s.

He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was the first time for him to wear nighties or negligees. To him, they looked like lingerie, and found out from Allison later that nighties, negligees and lingerie were actually the same - Allison schooled him on it - and had suggested for him to try some since owned had several now as part of his new fit-anyone wardrobe.

To be fair, he thought lingerie was like fancy underwear, but Allison explained they were “nightclothes,” though nowadays they were more than that. He didn’t quite understand, but he nodded anyway.

So he gamely tried some on, and, to his embarrassment, he liked it and felt pretty. But it was just Allison in the house – Kev and the girls weren’t here, so he didn’t feel too embarassed.

Actually, he felt more than pretty. Jack felt... sexy.

Whether it was the feel of the material or the cut, or the style of the nightclothes, he didn’t know. But this just brought home his situation, and he realized he needed to find a way back. He realized his emotional and sexual frustrations had been ratcheting up, and only his almost instinctive and automatic denial of it had kept it in check. He wasn’t prejudiced, and wasn’t a misogynist in any sense, but he identified and defined himself as a man. To have that taken away would affect even the most liberal of men.

Even Henry and Allison didn’t notice his gathering frustration. He himself didn’t notice so how could they? Only now did he notice.

In the bathroom, Jack took off his sexy nightie, finished his usual routine quickly without looking at himself the whole time, and dried himself quickly, or as quickly as he could - the hair-drying routine was something he was still getting used to. At least he didn’t need to shave anymore.

He had to get back to normal soon.

Jack went to the old guestroom, which was now his wardrobe room, and picked one of the first uniforms Mary’s made for him, which wasn’t part of the new fit-anyone outfits: It was a short-sleeved one, but at least it wasn’t too far from his original guy ones.

But first, in a dressing gown, he went downstairs, had a quick ham-and-cheese sandwich and some coffee, and had his “super juice” – a 500ml Tang drink, with the addition of forty-eight teaspoons of sugar.

He sat in the diagnostic chair Allison had made, switched on the sensors, and sipped the juice slowly.

In less than ten minutes, he finished his juice and went through his first morph of the day.

He wasn’t too hopeful but he looked at his hands. They weren’t his hands, so he knew it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph.

He checked and it was a new morph – his twentieth, this one of Dr. Jessica Macnee, the director of Section Three. That could be awkward because he saw the GD directors regularly. He couldn’t do anything about it so he decided he’ll cross that bridge when he got there.

He dutifully recorded the new morph’s wave form in the EM device, updated the other chairs, and went back up to get dressed. He hoped that the uniform he picked would fit.

- - - - -

At around eleven while patrolling, Andy called him on the phone and told him that that he was done with his session at Henry’s. He also said that Henry wanted to move their meeting to lunchtime at the café.

“Thanks, Andy,” Jack said. “You can take over now, so I can make that meeting. I’ll just finish one last call. See you later at the office.”

Presently, he was at the beginning of the new grove of trees that was at the edge of town – it seems that Dr. Leonardo, Eureka’s lone dendrologist, was working with a bunch of teenage volunteers from Tesla School, and one of her volunteers was missing.

After he arrived, he asked Dr. Leonardo to explain the situation.

Despite being less than five years old, Dr. Leonardo’s trees were all over twenty feet high. These trees were an improvement over the trees she tried to grow before, which had a propensity for falling down.

These new trees were slower to grow than her original batch, but these, at least, didn’t fall down so easily. In a matter of weeks, these new trees were fully-grown when a regular forest tree would take at least five years to be as full-grown. (To be fair, her first batch of trees could be fully grown in a matter of hours, but they weren’t stable, to say the least.)

Her project was mostly finished now, but she was doing the required five-year follow-through. After all, the new trees couldn’t be distributed if there would be consequences. So she was doing observation and due diligence.

Once she finished, though, saplings of her new trees could be distributed and provide the world with a new source of raw material, stem deforestation, help in reducing the effects of climate change, help in improving the quality of the air, and help to protect against soil erosion, floods, landslides, and so many other things.

In any case, the project seemed to be doing well, and her kids were there helping her do some measurements – something new that Dr. Leonardo was trying: getting the community to be more involved in her project. However, this Sunday, one of the kids had gone missing. It wasn’t twenty-four hours, but given the ongoing manhunt, Jack had everyone on alert for anything, and to call him right away.

As Dr. Leonardo was explaining the disappearance of Percy to Jack, the kids had congregated around him.

Clearly, they knew who he was and what happened to him, and were very intrigued. The boys were taken by her looks, of course, while the girls were more interested in knowing about him.

During the past days, unbeknownst to him, Jack had been starting to accumulate a reputation, undoubtedly aided and abetted by Dawn Cameron’s so-called “Jack Watch,” and Pilar Reed.

To the young women of Eureka, they were very impressed that a man could transform into a woman, and be so heroic and so capable, and, at the same time, so beautiful and so fashionable. He was proof to them that gender didn’t matter.

To the boys – it was just that Jack was such a hottie.

Jack started to organize the kids into search parties when the missing teenager, Percy, came back running.

It seems that he had discovered a cave.

That wasn’t too surprising – there were a few caves in Eureka’s forest area, and hikers and other nature lovers would discover one occasionally.

Still, Jack followed Percy back to the cave that he found, and inside the cave was a bunch of supplies and equipment. The cave was set up like a living area and electronics shack. Percy pointed to some things that he said, whoever it was, that person was working on some kind of remote control gizmo, or maybe a kind of robot.

“It’s all pretty high-tech, actually,” he said.

Normally, people would just ignore a kid, but this was Eureka, where even the kids routinely had IQs of 140. So Jack took his comment seriously.

Jack nodded. He looked at some of the stuff on a makeshift desk made from some old discarded shipping crates, and remembered seeing several things on it from Dr. Connery’s personal effects.

He took out his smartphone and took pictures of everything in the cave.

“All right, kids,” he said, “everyone out.” He herded the teens back out and back to Dr. Leonardo’s campsite.

“Dr. Leonardo,” he said to the dendrologist out of earshot of the kids, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop your surveys for a few days.”

Dr. Leonardo looked at him. “It’s about that robot, huh?”

“Possibly,” he said. “But please keep that confidential for now. I don’t want anyone to panic or whatever.”

“You can count on me, Sheriff,” she said.

“Can you help get these kids get home?”

“I’ll take care of it. Oh, and Sheriff?”

“Yes, Dr. Leonardo?”

“I heard about your morphs,” she said. “Is it true that... you, know, one of them was Melissa?”

“Melissa Benoit? Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately. Do you know Melissa?”

“Ummm, yes, I do. She’s my cousin.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh? Why sorry? I think that’s amazing! Can you... you know, morph into her anytime you want?”

Jack shrugged. “Pretty much. Listen, I have a meeting I have to go to. I’ll see you later and update you when you can start working on your trees again.” Jack shook the doctor’s hand and left for the lunch meeting.

“Bye, Jackie!” his new, young fans called after him.

Darn Pilar and Dawn! he grumbled to himself.

- - - - -

He made it to the café just in time.

As he parked near the café, the few people out and about on Sunday waved to him. “Hello, Sheriff,” most of them said, recognizing the uniform if not the girl. “Hi, Jackie!” others said.

“Hello,” he replied, smiled politely and waved back. This “fan” thing is getting out of hand, he thought.

Anyway, he found everyone at a table outside.

“Jack!” Allison called. And gave him a hug. “New morph, I see,” she said.

“Yep,” he replied. “That makes it twenty now.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find your morph soon. Although, since it’s down to about ten now, you can expect lots of repeats.”

“I figured.”

“Come and meet everyone,” she said. “I have a surprise!”

He got to their table out on the sidewalk, and he saw Henry, Jo, Zane, Fargo and...

“Dr. Grant!” Jack exclaimed.

Grant raised a finger to his lips in a shushing motion.

“Not so loud, sport,” he said. “Don’t you remember? It’s Trent Rockwell now.”

“Of course! Trent Rockwell,” he said and pulled him into a hug.

Back in 1947, Charles Grant, originally Trevor Grant, was the one who set up and conceived Eureka, and the concept behind it – that of getting the world’s most brilliant scientists together for the betterment of the world.

But, in a very complicated series of improbable events, Dr. Grant was hurled forward in time to 2010, and he got to see his brainchild brought to life.

However, because of skyrocketing costs and increasing difficulty in managing GD and the town, the government decided to shut the town down. Rather than allowing that, Dr. Grant, in the guise of “Trent Rockwell,” essentially bought the town to allow it to continue (by then, the stocks he had bought in the forties had matured in the intervening sixty-five years into enormous fortunes, giving him the necessary resources to purchase GD and the town). And after rescuing Eureka, he disappeared again, to pursue whatever he was pursuing at the time.

It was the first time for Jack and the others to see him again.

- - - - -

“Speaking of names,” ‘Trent’ said, “should I call you Jackie now?” He looked Jack up and down.

“Whatever!” Jack laughed. “I guess you’ve heard. Anyway, call me what you like. It’s so good to see you!”

“Thanks, Jack,” he said. “It’s good to see you, too. But I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.” He signed for them to sit down.

Vincent was so glad that they were all back together, but knew they had stuff to talk about, so he served them their food and left them alone. He’ll visit later.

“Henry,” ‘Trent’ gestured to him, “maybe you can start?”

Henry nodded. “Well... Fargo, Zane and I found some stuff.

“Thanks to Fargo, we were able to interpret most of Ross’s primary programming and encoded data. And, yes, this is indeed the Ross robot in that defunct project that Jo found out about.

“Ross, or ‘RS-1,’ is pretty much a mixture of technologies – its hardware is mostly off-the-shelf stuff from Japan, its weapons and armor are from the marines and the US Navy, and the electronics and software ares mostly vintage Area 51 stuff, and the stuff we use in Andy. That’s largely why Fargo and Zane were able to reverse-engineer a lot of its internals. And thanks to Fargo, we now know what they were after.”

“It seems,” Fargo said, “Ross’s master or masters, whoever they are, want access to Section Five. It was programmed to retrieve all the material it could get about Section Five projects.”

“Seems to me, it would have been so much easier to just grab the project files,” Allison interjected.

“I think that was the intention – Ross was supposed to work in partnership with another robot identified in its files as ‘JC-1.’ It was JC-1’s job to try and do that, with Ross’s help. Failing that, Ross was to physically break in and grab all the material it could get its hands on, and return them to its masters.”

“Who are its masters?” Jack asked.

“Who knows,” Jo said. “But Dr. Grant and I... I mean, Mr. Rockwell,” Jo grinned. “Mr. Rockwell and I have our suspicions. Since Eureka’s privatization, the government and the DoD lost its access to GD and Eureka data. And also, since we now do projects for non-US and non-government parties and companies, too, there are lots of people in the DoD and the government that are very uneasy. General Mansfield, for one. So we think it’s these people that are trying to access Section Five.”

“But, Jo,” Allison said, “We update the government about the military projects we do. It’s part of the law, and the rules set by the ERC in the BIS at the US Department of Commerce.”

“ERC and BIS?” Jack asked.

“the End-User Review Committee of the Bureau of Industry and Security,” Jo replied. “The Department of Commerce can prohibit us from selling products or providing services to certain governments or entities.”

“Right,” Allison said. “Sure, we don’t give the government the details, but we give enough information for them to know what we’re doing. We’re in strict compliance with the law, so I don’t know what their problem is.”

Henry shrugged. “There will always be people in the DoD and the government that will be suspicious regardless of what reports we submit. But that’s not all. Charles? I mean ‘Trent,’” Henry laughed.

Charles/Trevor/Trent nodded, smiling. “As usual, Henry’s correct.

“As soon as I heard Jo was making inquiries about Project Ross, I tried to assist by getting some information, too. From the sidelines only, of course.” He brought out some files and handed them to Henry and Jack. “In essence, the project was intended to create something like Deputy Andy, but a version of Andy that could be used as a superior soldier substitute. Hence the project name ‘Robot Super Soldier,’ or ‘RoSS.’

“But there were two robots produced by the project – Ross, which we all know, and another one. This one was closer to Andy, and was designed to pass for human. It was called the ‘Collaborative And Autonomous Robotic Emulated Entity,’ since it was supposed to work in a kind of collaborative partnership with the RoSS robot – sort of its supervisor.”

He looked around, but all he saw were blank looks.

“‘Collaborative and Autonomous Robotic Emulated Entity?’” he repeated. “Or maybe you prefer the acronym they used – Co.n.A.R.E.E.”

Jack and Allison looked at each other.

“Co.n.A.R.E.E. - Connery,” Jack said. “JC-1 – Jennifer Connery One...”

Allison looked at Charles. “Are you saying Dr. Connery is a robot?”

“Yes. Just like Andy, but a better, more convincing fake human.”

“But Dr. Connery’s a well-known scientist!”

Charles cleared his throat and opened his valise again. He brought out a picture of an old African-American woman.

“This is a picture of the real Dr. Connery,” he said. “She’s currently seventy-five years old, and lives in a home in Hawaii. Her real name is Jennifer Frederic and was born in nineteen forty-three. In her time, she worked with various companies and agencies, and made fantastic discoveries and breakthroughs. Most of her patents, discoveries and inventions were all under pseudonyms, or were kept top secret, largely because they were discoveries made by a black woman and were therefore not quite accepted or credited by the established scientific community. Imagine the kind of credibility she would have had back then. But it seemed she had some family connections in government, and this paved the way for her to get her work registered under her name and start collecting royalties, even if she didn’t get much public acknowledgement for them.

“Around 2008, people from Area 51 put her discoveries in robotics and electronics together, updated them, and attributed them to a fictitious Dr. Jennifer Connery.”

Charles pulled out another picture – someone that looked very similar to the Dr. Connery they knew.

“This is the little-known British actress Emogene Falco. Around 2009, she was hired by the Department of Defense for a series of photo shoots to be used for a PR campaign. Nothing came of the campaign, though, but she was nevertheless paid handsomely for her time and for her pictures.

“And for a year, a series of articles and back-dated publications were seeded in the relevant scientific communities and publications, establishing the credentials and reputation of ‘Dr. Jennifer Connery’ fairly quickly, and ‘her’ data and other discoveries were then funneled into the Andy Project – a pilot project to design a people-friendly robotic entity. The main project - Project Ross then followed the pilot project, which was the whole point of it.

“The Area 51 team that was supposedly working under the leadership of this fictitious Dr. Connery never even met her – perhaps because there really was no Dr. Connery - and most of their work was done according to instructions and specifications they received by courier or e-mail.” Charles grinned. “It sounds very much like a bad mystery novel, huh?”

“Yes.” Allison said.

“I doubt if the project can be replicated anymore,” Charles continued, “since most of the project files have disappeared, except the files that were passed on to GD for the purpose of maintaining Andy. Who we need to find is someone who can take whatever data is still existing, including Andy’s data, and replicate the project – a person that could have been part of the original project - and we might be able to track down who was really behind Project Ross and Project Andy.”

“But what genius can even make another Andy?” she said.

Charles pointed to Fargo.

“Hey!” Fargo said, “don’t look at me! I didn’t do it!”

“We believe you, Fargo,” Zane said, “but who else would have the knowledge and the skills to do it?” He shrugged. “I can’t do it, and Henry’s already said he couldn’t do it either.”

“There’s another one – Toby!”

“Your friend Toby Bismarck,” Jo said, “from Area 51.”

“Yes! Ask him!”

“I told you - we can’t find him,” Jo said.

Everyone paused at that.

“Ohmigod!” Fargo whispered. “Do you think Toby’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Jo said. No one spoke for a long time.

“Well,” Jack interjected into the silence, “here’s something else.” He then told everyone what he found near Dr. Leonardo’s campsite. He then shared the pictures he took.

“Look at this,” Fargo said and pointed to one of the devices on Connery’s makeshift table.

“What is it?” Jo asked.

“It’s a transmitter,” Fargo said. “It could be something used to contact Ross.”

“What about these,” Jo said, pointing to a bunch of what looked like gas tanks. Stickers on the tanks showed that they were industrial gas tanks stolen from GD.

“I don’t know,” Fargo said. “They could contain anything.”

“Nerve gas?” Jack asked.

“Most likely not,” Zane said. “The US nerve gas stockpiles are in Fort Detrick, Maryland. We don’t have any nerve gas or anything like that in Eureka. But those tanks could contain any other aerosol or gas, and allow the gas to be dispersed across a wide area using this attachment.” He pointed to the device beside the tanks.

“We won’t be able to know what they really contain,” Charles said, “unless we can get to that cave again, and grab that equipment. Jack?”

“Right,” Jack said. “Jo?”

“Let’s go!”

- - - - -

In fifteen minutes, they, including Andy, were at Dr. Leonardo’s campsite. Charles, Henry, Allison and Fargo had decided to go back to GD, however – Holly and Grace were back there doing follow-up stuff on the robot. Given that Dr. Connery might be able to contact it, it was best to back them up and keep watch over Ross.

As for the rest, Jack led them to where the cave was.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Jo asked as they walked, picking up on Jack’s troubled expression.

“If only we gave Dr. Connery a physical, or even just a simple scan,” he said, “we could have prevented all this, and I’d still be my old self...”

“No use blaming yourself,” Jo replied. “No one would have thought to do that. A physical isn’t mandatory for visiting scientists.”

“Yeah. Still...”

When they got there, the equipment was strewn all over the cave, everything deliberately destroyed, jumbled up and piled into the corners.

“That’s it, then,” Jo said.

“Wait!” Jack said. “Zane, can you look through all that and see if there are things from the pictures that are missing?” He handed Zane his phone.

Zane looked at Jack. “You’re a genius, Carter!”

He then scrabbled over and picked through the trashed electronics and other equipment. “The transmitter and the dispersal equipment aren’t here,” Zane said, “and the tanks are missing, too. Other than that, I can’t tell if anything else is missing.”

Jack sighed. “I thought so. This is all camouflage. She saw me and the kids earlier, so when we left, she decided to take the equipment she needed, and tried to hide that fact by trashing what was left.”

“Dr. Connery is pretty smart,” Andy said, “but she can’t pull the wool over our eyes! She’s up against Sheriff Jackie Carter!”

Whether or not Andy was being sincere or was attempting a joke, no one knew. They knew he was constantly trying to improve his sense of humor and was trying out material all the time. But this seemed unusually subtle humor for Andy, nor to mention inappropriate at the moment. But everyone laughed politely nevertheless.

“Shut up, you guys!” Jack said.

- - - - -

By the end of the day, Zane had all the junk from the cave trucked over to Section Ten so that they could examine them in detail.

For her part, Jo had deployed half of her security people in and around the area of Dr. Leonardo’s campsite, and had them spread out and look for Dr. Jennifer Connery, and that she be considered armed and dangerous: everyone was ordered to shoot on sight.

But since it was getting dark, Jack left Andy with Jo’s commandos to continue the hunt for the ConAREE robot, and they all regrouped back at GD.

Back in GD, Zane said he picked up a radio signal, and though the robot didn’t respond, they were worried. Zane and Fargo stopped work and isolated the robot.

They paired up to keep watch over the robot. Grace and Henry, with “Trent Rockwell” for company, took the first watch, to be followed by Allison and Jack, and then Holly and Fargo, and the last shift by Jo and Zane.

This gave Jack and Allison a chance to go have dinner at the café first while Jo and Zane went home, and Holly and Fargo checked in at the bed and breakfast formerly run by Beverly Barlowe and now run by the town.

Before going to dinner, though, since it was still early, Jack insisted on dropping by the office. He wanted to get his second morph for the day over with.

So, in Jack’s office, Allison mixed up a glass of his “super juice” and Jack sat in the special chair while he drank it. In less than fifteen minutes, the transformation was done, but, as Allison predicted, he had morphed into one of his old ones – his Nurse Tricia Heller morph again, to be precise.

Jack was disappointed, but he didn’t let Allison see his disappointment.

He decided to change into one of his fit-anyone uniforms and let Allison go ahead to the café.

As he looked in the mirror, he sighed. Who knows, he thought. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get my Jack Carter morph.

He stepped out of the office still finishing buttoning his top. Some people waved hello and he waved back. He blushed, realizing his top was still half undone, and hurried to button it up.

He didn’t know if he could really adjust to being a girl, if ever they found out this was permanent. But maybe tomorrow he’ll change into his Jack Carter morph.

Maybe tomorrow, he repeated to himself.

to be continued in Episode 10: “A Disaster on Main Street” Jan. 28, Monday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, discovered where Dr. Jennifer Connery, the supposed creator of the robot called Ross, had been hiding. Jack reported this to Henry and the others.

And then the information that Dr. Charles Grant brought, plus what Fargo and the rest unearthed, showed that the robot was after the secrets of Section Five, and was being helped by Dr. Connery, who was, in fact, yet another robot...

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

Jack and Allison were sleeping soundly. They were pretty tired, having only gotten to bed around four AM since their shift to watch over Ross the Robot was from eleven PM to two.

Before going to bed, Jack decided to trigger a morph so that he didn’t need to worry about it in the morning.

As predicted, the morph was a repeat. He had turned into his Megan Foxworth morph again. Oh, well. At least, he wasn’t a blonde again.

And then they went to sleep.

But in less than four hours, both of them were woken up by an alarm.

Jack sat up, instantly alert.

“Sarah!” he called as he sat up. Sarah was the AI system of the smarthouse. “What’s wrong?”

Allison also sat up, worried.

“Something’s wrong, Jack,” Sarah said in her new, faintly Australian voice. “My filters have detected massive quantities of EZ-four in the atmosphere.”

“What’s EZ-4?”

“It’s an anesthetic gas,” Allison said, “developed by Dr. Parrish’s NOLWEP Team. You know? Non-lethal weapons?”

“Ahhh.” Jack remembered the angry bees from before.

“Anyway,” Allison said, “Unlike all previous sleep gases, EZ-4 has no dangerous depressive effects on respiration or other effects. The reason sleep gas isn’t used is because people are liable to stop breathing or have heart attacks.

“All EZ-4 does is make people go to sleep for up to twenty-four hours, and the only side-effect is a wicked hangover afterwards. And even at twenty parts per million, it would still be effective.”

Jack nodded. “Are we safe inside, Sarah?”

“Totally safe, Jack. The smarthouse is hermetically sealed. And I have switched from outside air to my internal air supply.”

“Where is the gas coming from?”

“Unknown. But based on wind direction, its point of dispersion is somewhere downtown.”

Jack and Allison looked at each other. They remembered the air tanks in Jennifer Connery’s cave.

“Sarah, call Andy. Now!”

“What’s wrong, Jack?”

“Just call Andy!” He turned to Allison. “I have to go!”

Allison nodded. “All right. I can be ready in five.”

“No.”

Before she could protest, he put a finger on her lips.

“No, Allison. If something happens to me, someone has to be awake to take care of things. Do you understand?”

“Jack, I...”

He held her by the shoulders. “Do you understand, Allison!”

She looked into his eyes. Despite the female face, she could see her Jack in the eyes. And her Jack was worried for the town, but also for her.

“I understand, Jack,” she said, subdued.

Jack leaned forward and gave her a kiss.

“I’ll wear a body-cam if you want, and you can follow what happens to me. And if something does happen to me, it’s your turn. Okay?”

“Okay...”

“Jack,” Sarah interrupted.

“Yes, Sarah.”

“I can’t reach Andy. But I was able to reach one of Jo’s people, a Sergeant Dalton. He’s on-line now.”

“Thanks. Sergeant Dalton?”

“Sheriff Carter, yes, this is the Sarge. We found Dr. Connery, but she managed to deactivate Andy somehow and was able to escape. I’m afraid we lost her in the woods.”

“I know where she is. She’s in town, and she’s released sleeping gas...”

Dalton turned away from the mic for a second. “Corporal! Gas masks! Chemical gas attack drill!” He took out his own gas mask and pulled it on.

“Apologies, Sheriff Carter,” he said. “Please continue.” The mask muffled his voice a little.

Jack nodded. “No worries, Sarge. I will be getting ready in a moment. What’s your ETA?”

“We can be on Main Street in about thirty minutes, sir.”

“Good. See you then.” They heard the click as Dalton hung up.

“Are you sure you don’t want company?” Allison said. She had gotten up by then and had gone to Jack’s “wardrobe room,” which used to be the smarthouse’s guest room.

Jack followed.

“I’m sure. Would I need to wear a gas mask as well?”

“Probably not. EZ-4 breaks down in about twenty minutes after inducing sleep. That was part of the specs when it was formulated. By the time you get to town, it should be safe.”

As they were talking, Allison quickly stripped him of his nightie and started dressing him up.

“But what about just outside?” Jack asked.

“Oh, right. I guess you do need one.” Allison pulled up a pair of dark-brown tights over his legs and hips and then got his feet into a pair of white hiker boots. The clothes that she picked came from the clothes that Pilar originally bought instead of from the fit-anyone clothes.

“Sarah?”

“I will have a gas mask ready by the door, Jack.”

“Thanks!”

Allison soon had him in a T-shirt bra, blouse, gloves and a woolly jacket – all from the old stuff Pilar got.

“There!” Allison huffed. “Not only fashionable, but all set for the early morning ¬temperature.” She got a brush out and started brushing his hair. His Megan Foxworth morph had reddish-brown hair up to the middle of his back, and it needed a brush. Talk about bed hair.

“How cold is it outside anyway?” Jack asked.

“About thirty degrees,” Sarah responded.

As they walked downstairs, Allison continued brushing his long hair, and by the time they got to the door, his hair had been tamed and was now shining with a glossy sheen.

Jack saw himself in the mirror. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Thanks, Allison!”

“You’re welcome, my brave and beautiful sheriff,” she said, and gave him a deep and thorough kiss.

Jack was surprised to say the least.

“Well...” he started to say.

“No, no, no,” Allison giggled. “We have no time for that. You have work to do.”

“All right.” Jack put on his gun belt, pinned his badge to his tweedy coat and grabbed the mask on the table by the door.

“See you later, Allison,” he said.

He slipped on the mask, pulled the door open and closed it behind him right away, minimizing the amount of gas that seeped inside. He was sure Sarah could filter out what got in before it affected Allison.

He then climbed up the stairs and stepped out into the open air. Rushing to his patrol car, he got in. He switched on the ventilators and waited for the gas to be cleared from inside the GD-modified police car. He then pulled off the mask, switched on his lights and siren, and started for town.

On the way, he had to dodge several cars on the road whose drivers were overcome by the sleep gas. It was the height of Eureka’s morning commute, if ten cars on a two-lane asphalt road constituted a “commute.”

The damage was worse on Main Street. A few cars had some minor collisions, and over thirty people were scattered on the road and on the sidewalk. Jack decided to pull over otherwise he might run over someone.

He stepped out and started to gingerly step over people sleeping.

“Is that you, Sheriff?” someone called. He looked up and saw Sergeant Dalton.

“Sarge!” Jack called. “Help me pull these people off the street.”

Following her example, Dalton and his team took off their masks, and, together, had everyone off the road and onto the sidewalk.

“Thanks, Sarge,” Jack huffed, and gave the others a nod of thanks. They saluted.

“Okay, it’s time to find Dr. Connery.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dalton handed him the same kind of high-tech shotgun he used that time when they encountered Ross near GD’s main entrance. Jack took point and they started making their way up the street. Near the end of Main Street, they saw her in ripped clothes. Clearly, she’d been having a rough time hiding out. But she still looked as pretty as she did the first time Jack saw her.

On her back was some kind of jury-rigged backpack connected to a rifle-thing in her hand via a thick power cable.

“Doctor Connery!” Jack called from behind a car. “You are both outgunned and out-numbered! You better give yourself up and avoid all this nonsense!”

The human-looking robot stood up and fired her weapon. Several blue bolts of electric lightning shot out of the end of her weapon, making Jack and his people dive for cover.

Several cars nearby were hit by the lightning, and all of them exploded. Jack looked and, thankfully, none of them were occupied.

Obviously, the robot was outnumbered but not outgunned.

“I suggest that it is you who has to back off, Sheriff,” she said. “This is patterned after the Tesla sidearm that they use in Warehouse 13, so you know this is pretty dangerous.”

Jack had heard about Warehouse 13, but he didn’t know what a “tesla” was. In any case, Jack and his people stood their ground.

“You are the sheriff, right?” she asked after firing a second time.

“How did you know I’m the sheriff?” Jack replied.

“Oh, I’ve been monitoring your calls,” she said. “Besides, you’re wearing Sheriff Carter’s badge.”

Ooops! Jack thought. He signaled to Dalton, and he ran over to him crouched.

“Sarge,” he said, “I’m going to rush the robot. And then I’m going to run diagonally to the right and get its attention. When it targets me, I want you to target that backpack and use up your clip.”

“Sheriff, how sure are you that person is a robot?”

“Pretty sure. Anyway. Are you set?”

“All set, sir.”

“Okay, here I go.”

Jack stood up, firing his super-shotgun. Connery stood up and started taking a bead. Jack’s shots hit her on the chest and shoulder but, aside from messing up her shot, it didn’t even faze her, or rather, “it.”

Because of the imprecise nature of the “Tesla” she had to concentrate on Jack and ignored Dalton, and Dalton was able to fire at her backpack, firing in full automatic.

In moments, Connery’s backpack exploded, showering everything nearby with fire and sparks. The explosion smashed her down into the pavement, and the backpack burst into flames.

Jack ran to the robot and, using his brand-new boots, kicked the backpack away with as much strength as he could muster.

He trusted the fire-resistant nature of his clothes and got even closer. He kicked the pack again, and it seemed that the fire had burned the straps enough that he was able to finally kick it away.

Once it was off, Jack got his cuffs and cuffed the robot’s wrists behind her back.

The others got closer and Jack waved them in.

“Give me another pair of cuffs,” he said. One of Dalton’s people gave him his, and Jack slapped them onto her wrists as well, double-cuffing her.

“Cuff her by the ankles, too,” Dalton said, and she was double-cuffed there as well.

They noticed that the clothes on her back had burned through, and the skin on her back seemed to have melted away, showing a lot of metal parts, wires and tubes.

Dalton grabbed her by the upper right arm and flipped her over.

The previously gorgeous brunette wasn’t gorgeous anymore. Her artificial nose was crushed, and multiple gashes on her right cheek had the skin hanging. The metal upper and lower jaws were exposed, and one of the artificial eyeballs was hanging by a wire.

“Goddammit!” one of the commandos said, “and I thought she was so pretty, too.”

“Guys,” Jack said, “I’d like to introduce you to the Collaborative and Autonomous Robotic Emulated Entity, or CO.N.A.R.E.E. for short. She is also designated JC-1.”

The robot turned to Jack and it seemed to smile, although it was hard to be sure given its torn and ruined face.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” it said, turning back to Dalton and his people. Its voice module was obviously broken since the previously pleasant voice sounded like it was warbling now, and coming from within a tin can, and with damaged mouth, it was having hard time pronouncing things. “Pleased to meet you all again.” And then it promptly died. If that could be said about something that had never been alive.

- - - - -

Jack found that all of their phones and radios were deactivated somehow, so he and “his” commando team drove back to GD instead, with the dead CnAREE robot isolated in the back of one of their trucks, and with Andy in another truck. Dalton and seven of his displaced SWAT people crowded into Jack’s jeep, - Dalton in the passenger seat, three in the back seat, and four in the back. It was a tight fit but it wasn’t too long a drive.

The rest of Dalton’s people stayed behind to move all of the people they found on the street to the sidewalk and see about turning off stoves or cars or whatever.

As they arrived in GD, they noticed dozens of people asleep as well. It seems many of the gates and doors were stuck open because of bodies blocking them, and so a lot of the gas was able to get in. Henry, Grace and Grant were some of those that were gassed. Jo and Zane were safe, though, and they were able to coordinate operations and keep the building running.

Whatever the radio-like device was that Dr. Connery took with her and triggered was essentially an EMP generator that could direct its electromagnetic pulse. It had many similarities to the DED device that the Department of Defense had commissioned GD to make five years ago.

When Connery fired her version of the DED device, all communications in the whole of GD died, but because of their experience with the DED, Zane and the people in GD knew how to recover from such a disaster, even if it took a couple of hours to do that.

Clearly, with her EMP thing and the sleep gas, the Dr. Connery robot wanted to break back into GD and Section Ten, but she didn’t count on Jack’s intervention.

In any case, Zane and some of the other scientists were able to reset most of the systems in the compound. Zane told Jack they should be able to get some phones running in a couple of hours.

Jack had Dalton’s people park the ruined CoNAREE robot in Section Ten, and, after handshakes all around, they left Jack and followed Jo to help GD recover from the forced shutdown.

For Jack, he went to the cafeteria and had a big brunch. After all, he didn’t have a chance to have breakfast earlier, although he would have preferred something from home, or from Café Diem.

It was a mistake, of course, to eat such a big meal because he soon found his bracelet, the fancy warning device Allison had given him to warn of an impending morph, starting to blink.

He rushed to Allison’s office and sat in the diagnostic chair there. He pressed the button and waited for the change. The bracelet started blinking faster and faster and he changed in about ten minutes. He checked and, no, it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph, but it was a new morph nevertheless.

He updated the EM device and tried to update the rest of the chairs, but found that the Internet connection down. At least one of the chairs recorded the new morph waveform. This made his twenty-first morph.

He checked through the pictures in the list of DNA volunteers that he had, and was shocked to find none of them matched his current morph.

This new morph looked roughly as young as his Dawn Cameron morph, but this one was a brunette. Other than that, this new morph was totally new, and she didn’t look like anyone in his file. Alarmed, he jumped up, intending to go to Henry’s office to ask Grace or Henry what went wrong, but he belatedly remembered they were part of the group that was knocked out by the sleep gas. Instead, he needed to get to Allison, and ask her to check him out.

By standing, though, he felt the shoes pinch his feet really badly. Dammit! he thought to himself, clothes again!

He took off the boots, unbuttoned his tweed jacket and went in search of someone who could lend him some clothes.

- - - - -

The best he could do was a pair of velvet mid-calf boots, a short miniskirt and a stretchy cami string top that someone had in her locker. The girl explained that these were the club clothes she wore when she and her friends went out for girls’ night a few weeks ago. They were clean and everything, she said – she just hadn’t had time to bring them home yet.

Jack sighed. These were all that fit. He realized that being taller than most girls, he knew that this would be happening a lot. And since beggars can’t be choosers, he accepted the clothes, thanked the girl and went to the ladies bathroom to put them on. He had to go with no bra, however, and had to make do with his current panties. Thank goodness they stretched. Oh, well.

He put a brave face on and brazened it out as he walked back to his jeep. Inevitably, he caught the appreciative eye of most of the men and some of the women. He just smiled politely, nodded to them, tried not to rush, and calmly continued on.

Can’t be helped, he thought.

He eventually got to the jeep and drove back to the smart house.

When he got there, though, he had another problem: Sarah wouldn’t let him in.

“Sarah!” Jack said in frustration, “it’s me! It’s Jack!”

“I’m sorry, miss,” Sarah said in her new Australian voice, “but you are clearly not Sheriff Carter.”

“Dammit, Sarah! I’ve morphed again!”

“Yes,” Sarah replied, “but I have access to Sheriff Carter’s file of photos of the people he turns into, and you are not one of them.”

“I know that! That’s why I need to talk to Allison to find out what went wrong!”

“I’m sorry, miss, but I do not believe you. Now please leave these premises or I might be forced to Taser you.”

“Allison!” Jack bellowed.

Sarah thought it through. “You’re absolutely right, Allison,” she said after a few moments. “Miss, if you’d care to come into the bunker and put your right palm against the door sensor.”

Jack sighed, went through the aboveground airlock door and went down. Beside the smarthouse’s main door was a handprint sensor. Jack put his right hand on it.

“Fingerprints and voiceprint confirmed,” Sarah said, and opened the door. “I’m sorry, Jack, but you entrusted me with Allison’s protection. I had to be thorough.”

“That’s all right, Sarah,” he said. “You did good.” He went to Allison and gave her a kiss and a hug.

“So you went through a new morph.” Allison said. “Who is it this time?”

“That’s just it, Allison, it’s not one of the forty.”

“I can’t believe that,” she said. “Why didn’t you just call?”

Jack explained everything that had happened.

Allison nodded as Jack told her everything that happened since they woke up.

“So Zane said they’d have communications back after a couple of hours?” Allison asked.

“Yes. In the meantime, we’re all alone.” He brought Allison closer and gave her a kiss. But Allison felt more ill at ease than usual. She was somewhat getting used to Jack being a girl but this particular morph seemed to be even younger than Kevin.

She explained this to Jack, and he seemed to understand.

He sighed. “Just my luck,” he muttered. “Jailbait again.”

“Anyway,” Allison said, “first things first. Let’s see if we can find out who you’ve turned into.”

While they waited for GD’s comms to come back, Allison used Sarah’s files of the people from GD, and picked out one likely candidate.

“She could be the one,” Allison said. “This is Hannah Cyrus, the daughter of Dr. Bill Cyrus from Section Three.”

“But she doesn’t look at all like my morph,” Jack said, “and she’s not in the list that gave DNA samples to Dr. Barrows.”

“We can confirm that later with her father.”

“You say she’s the closest?”

“Yes. She’s the only one that could possibly be it, actually. Let’s see if we can find some clues. Sarah, can you display Hannah’s records?”

“Of course, Allison.”

Allison read the file. “Ahhh!” she said, and pointed to a line in the displayed data. “She had some reconstructive surgery done.”

“That explains it!” Jack nodded. “Sarah, can you display her picture prior to her plastic surgery?”

Sarah wiped the screen and displayed the original picture she had up plus another one side by side.

They looked at both pictures.

“Hmmm,” Jack said. “Her pre-plastic surgery picture does look more similar to my morph, but it’s still too far off. My other morphs are closer to their originals than this one.”

“Excuse me, Jack,” Sarah said, “but the picture you are referring to is actually Ms Cyrus’ post-surgery picture.”

“What! But how is that possible?”

Allison continued to look at the picture deep in thought.

“I think I might have an idea, Jack,” she said after a while, “but I have to ask Grace first. For now, let’s assume your new morph is based off Hannah Cyrus. By my count, you now have twenty-one. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then that means you still have ten or eleven more to go, excluding a Jack Carter morph, assuming Hannah is indeed a new one and not part of our original list. Don’t worry, one of them will be your Jack Carter morph.” Allison gave Jack a hug.

“Thanks, Allison.”

Sarah made what sounded like the electronic version of someone clearing her throat.

Jack smiled at that. “Yes, Sarah,” he said, “what is it?”

“It’s Mr. Donovan, Jack. It seems they’ve finally reestablished GD’s communications.”

“Finally!” Allison sighed.

to be continued in Episode 11: “The Final Showdown” Jan. 30, Wednesday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

After an encounter in Eureka’s main street, Jack disabled and captured the Jennifer Connery robot, and brought it to GD. At that time, Jack found himself changing into his twenty-first morph.

He only has ten or eleven more morphs to go, and is worried that none of them will be his Jack Carter morph.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

The following morning was chaos back at GD. Everyone was trying to recover from the devastating effect of the loss of communications in GD, and the gassing of about seventy-five percent of its people.

Most everyone was still trying to recover from the effects of being gassed and, as Dr. Parrish confirmed when he created the gas for GD’s NOLWEPS program, the after-effects were minimal, except for the extremely bad case of hangover.

Luckily, Dr. Grant, or rather, “Trent Rockwell,” knew of a hangover remedy that included tomato juice and honey, and a bagel with cream cheese on the side.

No one really believed it but apparently it works.

Allison agreed, actually. Like alcohol, Dr. Parrish’s gas makes one lose a lot of electrolytes needed by the brain, so the juice, as well as the salty bagels, helps with that, while the cream cheese gives a dose of protein that helps neutralize stomach acids. As for the honey – it helps raise blood glucose levels quickly.

“I never parsed my father’s hangover cure that way,” Charles said, “but I know it really works.” He took another sip of the tomato juice-honey combination.

“I’ll say,” Henry said. “Thanks, Charles.” He lifted his glass. “I’ll keep this in mind the next time I go on a bender.” He caught Grace’s glare. “... not that I ever would go on a bender...”

Grace nodded sagely at that, sipped her tomato juice-and-honey drink. And giggled.

They were all gathered in Henry’s office as they tried to pick up the pieces, and help Henry, Grace, Grant, Fargo and Holly recover from the after-effects of Isaac Parrish’s sleeping gas.

At the moment, Allison was very interested in the fact that Holly was equally affected. Holly’s body wasn’t, in fact, a real human body anymore, but was artificially grown for her – the Astraeus thing several years ago took away her body, and only Fargo’s and Zane’s artificial body helped her survive.

(Holly and Fargo explained that her synthetic body, aside from the metallic skeleton, was actually mostly human now, with very human DNA. She still had to take iron and other supplements for now, however, until she and Fargo can figure out if it was possible to replace her metal bones with real ones – a person’s bones was responsible for balancing the iron in one’s body, as well as produce blood cells and other blood components.)

- - - - -

By now, Jo and Jack were able to piece together all of the events from yesterday based on all the clues that they’ve been able to gather:

Sometime in the early morning, Andy, and Jo’s people led by Sergeant Dalton, were able to track down “Dr. Connery” in the forest, but it was mostly Andy who was able to follow her in the dark via his built-in night vision.

Dalton wasn’t completely sure since he couldn’t see everything, but Andy and “Dr. Connery” had an encounter. Whatever happened, Andy was left on the forest floor, deactivated.

A follow-up showed several broken tree branches around Andy that indicated a fierce fight. But since it was between two robotic entities, the fight wasn’t as noisy as it would have been if it were between people.

Andy showed some superficial damage on his arms and torso, but he was more or less intact. What deactivated him was the EMP device that the Jennifer Connery robot had with her, and she fired it at Andy at point-blank range. After which, the robot disappeared into the forest again. Marks on the forest floor showed that she was dragging several heavy objects, probably the air tanks. Further on, she got onto the access road that went into that part of the forest, and broke into a forest ranger’s emergency shack. She was able to grab the little pickup parked there and was able to bring her equipment to town (this was confirmed by the forest service truck that was found abandoned near Main Street, and the half-dozen empty high-pressure air tanks in its truck bed).

The robot then waited for the right wind conditions and then released about 10,000 liters of highly compressed sleep gas, covering over two square kilometers of Eureka, including GD, sometime between eight and nine AM. Even at twenty parts per million, the sleeping gas was effective, and it affected almost one hundred percent of the population in town, and seventy-five percent of those within the GD buildings.

Jo’s people also found the remains of the EMP device that disabled Andy at close range, and disabled GD’s communications at long range – the robot, perhaps to prevent it from being used against her and her partner-robot, RoSS, destroyed it.

The “Tesla weapon” that the robot used was essentially a two million-volt “polyphase electro-shock gun” that discharges at around fifty amps – more than enough to kill anyone. According to the literature in GD’s files, the Tesla was the standard weapon the agents from Warehouse 13 use. The power of the Warehouse 13 version was quite low, however, and could only knock out people and cause short-term memory loss. Dr. Connery’s version could burn up a person completely. It just brought home the enormous risk that Jack took to destroy that weapon.

The half-melted CoNAREE robot was completely destroyed, and was now laying on a table in Section Ten, along with the bigger, more intact RoSS robot. Just to be safe, Zane took out the CoNAREE robot’s power packs, so they were now sure it was a hundred percent dead.

As for Andy, his internals were EMP-resistant, except for his main actuating processor and power pack. By replacing them, and rebooting the robot, Zane was able to bring Andy back to life again, with memory and circuits completely intact.

Zane then “debriefed” him, and Andy’s data perfectly corroborated Jack’s conclusions, insofar as Andy’s part in the entire thing was concerned.

- - - - -

Andy asked to be excused so that he could have some rest and run some internal diagnostics. Smiling, Jack agreed and said that Sarah would be very happy to know he was all right. Andy nodded his thanks and left, presumably to go to Sarah.

“Ahhh, love,” Allison quipped.

Jack shook his head. “I will never get used to that,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Allison said. “It’s all totally harmless.” She leaned over and gave Jack a kiss on the cheek. Allison felt a little awkward since Jack was still in his Hannah morph, and, though taller, Jack still appeared to be a teenager.

Someone cleared his throat. It was Charles.

Allison and Jack belatedly realized that they were surrounded by their friends. Looking around, they found everyone smiling at them.

Blushing, Allison and Jack made some excuses about getting Jack’s next morph over with, and they proceeded to her office where the special diagnostic chair was.

Jack was still wearing the stretchy cami string top that he borrowed before, but had replaced the miniskirt and velvet mid-calf boots with a pair of stretchy fatigue pants and combat boots from his fit-anyone wardrobe – being in such a short skirt was making him blush constantly.

Arriving at Allison’s office he sat down in the diagnostic chair. There were four of these chairs: one was in Jack’s office, another two were in their two houses, and this one was in Allison’s office in GD.

The purpose of the chairs were to use sensors to gather more information about Jack’s morphs as they occur, as well as to update Jack’s little “EM device” that allows him to pick which morph he transforms into. Each chair automatically updates the others so that Allison and Grace had the latest data about Jack’s morphs.

This time, when they triggered the morph, Jack came out as one of his previous morphs – the one that looked very close to Sgt. Kira Knight, one of Jo’s security people.

Both Allison and Jack were disappointed that it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph – the one that they’ve been waiting for ever since they found out what was happening to Jack – but were moderately cheered by the fact that, since this was a repeat, Jack still had ten or eleven remaining morphs, and they were both hopeful that one of them would be the Jack Carter morph they’ve been waiting for.

Allison consulted with Grace earlier, and though Grace wasn’t too much in a position to get into any deep discussions at the moment due to the lingering hangover, Grace lent Allison her tablet, and she was able to read Grace’s notes on why Jack’s morphs weren’t exact clones of the DNA donors.

Grace’s theory had to do with what is called epigenetics.

It’s been known for a while that the DNA doesn’t contain the complete details of what a person is, physically speaking, at least: though DNA does provide the genetic “blueprint” of a person, that blueprint does not tell the entire story, as there is something called “epigenetics,” which speak of heritable phenotypic traits, as opposed to inheritable phenotypic traits – heritable traits are not due to genetics and cannot be passed on to offspring.

Epigenetic changes are mostly because of external or environmental factors. Some changes can be the result of DNA damage but some are due to something else altogether, mostly environmental, causing certain genes to be expressed or suppressed other than because of their DNA.

Grace believed Dr. Barrows accomplished her morphs partly by genetic modification, but also partly by epigenetic manipulation. And it may be that, though Jack had the same DNA all throughout all of his morphs, the manner by which genes are expressed or suppressed may not be totally because of the DNA, but must include epigenetic effects of Dr. Barrows’ device.

Clearly, the differences of Jack’s morphs with the donor women were partly because of Jack’s original DNA. There were some constants – like Jack’s height or Jack’s fingerprints or Jack’s blood type – those came from his male form. But there were other constants that seemed to be the result of the mixing of the DNA, like Jack’s new female voice that was the same across all his morphs. But then, there were other changes that varied from form to form, which must have been pre-coded into Dr. Barrows’ device.

But even that theory didn’t fit.

Grace tried to find another reason for these variations, but the variation from what was expected was too inconsistent, and she couldn’t figure out why: some were thinner than expected, some were not; some were more blonde than expected, some were not; some were crystal blue-eyed when they should have just been regular. But as pointed out by Allison’s son, Kevin, Jack’s morphs were “upgraded” into hotties.

Grace tried that hare-brained idea again: what if Jack’s unconscious preferences were controlling or constraining some epigenetic modifications?

But how does one prove that?

Grace decided to look at Jack’s psychiatric records over the years he’d been in Eureka, and the years when he was with the US Marshals. By mapping his answers to questions in psychiatric questionnaires, and the preferences and tastes that he expressed in those government-mandated psychiatric interviews, Grace found a correlation, and she concluded that Jack’s morphs fit his preferences for female paramours. But does that mean Jack’s conscious mind played a role in his morphs? Was it totally unconscious or did his conscious mind control it?

There were some things that seemed to be beyond his influence, though – age, for example, or ethnicity, or even something as mundane as the length of the hair. Those seem to have been constrained by the genetics and epigenetics of the donor contained in the samples they donated at the time of their donation.

Grace then thought, well, if this was correct, did that mean that every time Jack changed to, say, his morph of Dr. Jessica Hartley, the primatologist from Section Three, will he always morph to the same state every time, and have the same hair every time? What if he had his hair cut, or had it styled? What if he cut himself, say, on his thumb? Will his morph have that cut? Will it have the new hair length or hairstyle? Will it always be the same age as the first time Jack changed into that particular morph? Conceivably, Jack could be immortal.

This idea of epigenetically constrained morphs was actually supported by Jack’s recent change into Hannah Cryus, Dr. Bill Cyrus’ daughter. (Hannah Cyrus did confirm that she donated her DNA to Dr. Barrows’ project, but she did it late into the project, which could mean that her donation wasn’t properly recorded, as Dr. Barrows had passed away by then, and recording became spotty when it became unclear whether the project would continue or not. In fact, there could be several other samples in the mix that they don’t know about. If ever, Allison would have to contact all GD and Eureka employees, residents and visitors in order to know.)

As far as Grace’s theory goes, when Hannah had her plastic surgery, she had effectively changed herself, and her changes were, one way or another “captured” in her epigenetics. So Jack’s morph reflected Hannah post-surgery.

It was very mind-boggling, actually, Allison thought. She agreed with Grace, but she knew they’d only confirm their theories over time by observing Jack and getting more data.

So, for the meantime, Allison decided to concentrate on the here-and-now.

She decided to add her own notes to Grace’s theories, as well as her own theories relating to Jack’s morph. One such theory was that Jack naturally morphs at least twice a day, probably because his energy levels go up and down as a natural part of his circadian rhythm.

If so, stabilizing his form may be a problem. But perhaps they could use the EM device they invented to continually morph him to the same form and, in that way, stabilize him. And if they do find his Jack Carter morph, that meant Jack could live the rest of his days as himself. Something she was praying for, for Jack’s sake and hers, as well as their family’s.

There were other questions, like can Jack keep on morphing? Is there a penalty to be paid for that? Or how quickly can he morph from one form to another? Or could he even learn to consciously stop it? She and Grace assumed he’d need about nine hours between morphs, but Allison now thinks Jack can morph as quickly as in an hour, or as long as two days.

She knew that they will be able to answer these questions eventually, but she thought they could use some help.

She therefore emailed a note to Grace and Henry’s email boxes that she intended to contact a friend of hers from the CDC – Dr. Vanessa Calder. She knew Vanessa worked on weird cases like this one, so she might be able to help. And though she does have connections to the intelligence community, as well as to Warehouse 13 (which they all have heard about before), Allison knew that she’s no spook, and that she trusted her implicitly.

For now, she’ll wait for Grace and Henry’s response before trying to contact Vanessa.

- - - - -

Jack knew enough now that he knew his Kira morph had the same measurements as his newest Hannah morph, so he didn’t bother to change.

Allison seemed to be busy, which left Jack with nothing to do. So he went in search of something.

He decided to pass by Section Ten, but was greeted with Sergeant Dalton, who was surrounded by his people, and they seemed to be very agitated.

“Hey, Sarge,” Jack said.

“Better not go in, Sheriff,” Dalton replied. “The big robot’s just switched on. All by itself. And it trashed Section Ten.”

“What!”

“Everyone except for Mr. Donovan was able to escape. I’ve informed Ms Lupo already, and she’ll be sending some backup in a while. In the meantime, we’re to maintain a perimeter.”

Jack agreed. He rushed to Section Ten’s main doors, which were wide open, and he found the robot had indeed torn up Section Ten. Jack looked around and saw Zane knocked out, but he seemed to be largely unhurt. Except for being knocked out, of course.

At the moment, RoSS, the big robot, was standing but immobile - it was looking down at the unmoving form of the other robot – the former Dr. Connery. Jack couldn’t help but feel the robot was grieving or crying as it gazed down at the torn up and half-melted Connery robot.

Used to be Jack wouldn’t think this way, but having had Andy as his deputy for a while now, and having Sarah taking care of his house and his family, he knew his way around AIs by now. He knew, almost as a certainty, that the robot was grieving.

Jack must have made some noise or something because the giant robot’s head swung around to face him. As the robot saw him, it squealed, like a stuck pig. If ever a robot could scream in anger, that was it.

Clearly, the robot recognized Jack. He was in his Kira morph when he “electrocuted” it that other time, and it wasn’t scared anymore – it was mad. It blamed Jack for what happened to the Jennifer Connery robot.

Jack backed away, and the robot started to follow him, slowly gathering speed.

That robot’s going to be unstoppable, he thought, but at least I can lure it away to where it can’t hurt people.

“Sarge!” he called. “Don’t get in its way! I’m going to the parking structure and lure it out of GD. As soon as we’re clear, get Donovan to medical, organize a team and track me!”

Dalton nodded and kept people away. Jack steered away from Medical where most of the gassed people were recuperating, and ran through the rotunda and into the elevator.

Ross didn’t care about keeping quiet and not causing any damage anymore, and just busted through walls and doors.

Jack jabbed at the elevator button and the doors closed.

He looked at the indicator and it slowly went down to the parking level. There was a bang on the elevator’s ceiling and a robotic hand punched through reaching for him.

Jack ducked and avoided the waving, reaching arm. The elevator doors opened and he jumped out.

Yelling for everyone to stay clear, he sprinted for his patrol jeep, and drove it right up to the wooden security barrier. He stopped there and looked into his rear view, waiting for the robot. In a few moments, the elevator door exploded outward and the robot came out.

As soon as Jack saw that the robot spotted him, he gunned the engine, slammed the security barrier into toothpicks and flew out of the parking structure.

The robot sprinted for him, chasing his jeep at a comparable speed. Jack realized some of the reasons for the over-powered motors of that thing: Ross hardly needed any kind of vehicle, and could go over any kind of terrain, unlike a car, but do it at a car’s pace.

But Jack’s jeep has been souped up by Henry Deacon, the greatest engineer in the world (he reminded himself not to let Henry hear him say that), and stepped on the gas.

The jeep shot down the street like a rocket, leaving the robot well behind. However, Jack realized his miscalculation when he saw some curves up ahead. He let go of the gas and fought against the instinct to step on the brakes. Instead, he used the handbrake and slowly pulled it up, gradually slowing the jeep enough for him to steer around the comparatively gentle curves.

That was, until he came up to a sharp hairpin turn.

- - - - -

The jeep wasn’t able to make the hairpin turn, of course, so it skidded onto its side.

Thank god I wore my seatbelt, Jack thought.

Carefully, he unclipped himself and as he did, he realized he didn’t have his gun belt, and therefore he didn’t have his gun and his other equipment as well.

Reaching into the glove compartment, he brought out his spare gun as well as several clips. His thigh holster was wrapped around it and he put the entire thing under his arm. He also spotted the high-tech shotgun-slash-automatic rifle Dalton gave to him before in the passenger footwell, and grabbed that, too.

Jack levered himself out of the tipped-over jeep and dropped to the ground.

Checking himself, he saw that he was unhurt. He strapped the thigh holster to his right thigh, but he had to loosen the straps given his thigh was a little... thicker, stuck his spare gun into the holster and clipped it. He looked down the street and there was no sign of the robot although he could hear it approaching. He slipped the shotgun-rifle’s strap over his shoulder and started making his way up the low hill and into the forest.

Jack knew he was just a few minutes to town by road, but maybe half an hour on foot through the forest. With all the trees, at least that would slow the robot down. When he was on top of the hill, he saw the robot appear around the bend. Jack ducked down so he wouldn’t be spotted.

The robot was actually running, like a person – arms swinging and head down, like a sprinter. If the robot’s appearance were more like Andy’s, he’d be indistinguishable from any person. Aside from being over eight feet tall, of course.

Time to make like a tree and leave, Jack thought and started weaving through the trees in the direction of town. In his office was Jo’s old gun rack. He had more than enough firepower there to squash Ross like a bug. But he needed to get to it first.

Behind him, he heard the robot scream its metal-screeching scream. Jack heard tearing metal and, when he looked back, he saw one of his jeep’s doors sailing through the air.

Pissed, I’m telling you, Jack thought.

After five minutes of jogging down an animal trail Jack stumbled on, he heard the robot crashing through the trees. The robot was tracking him well. Not surprising, after all. Andy would have been just as efficient.

Jack knew that it would probably be better if he got off the trail and make it more difficult for the robot. But he wouldn’t make good time anymore. Jack decided to stay on it, praying it wasn’t a mistake.

Turned out it was.

- - - - -

Jack could glimpse the road through the trees and down the little hill he was on. He was ten minutes from making it.

As he got to a natural fork, the robot came crashing through the trees.

Turning to face it, he fired Dalton’s shotgun.

The slugs, or whatever they were, hit the robot on the chest point-blank and exploded. Jack was knocked off his feet by the blast wave, but it knocked the robot down as well.

Scrambling back onto his feet, Jack made a break for it and ran on down the trail. The robot had a more difficult time getting back up so Jack made the most of his extra time.

Jack looked around and saw a small rise. He climbed up the mound, shimmied up a tree and waited. The robot started walking up the trail and Jack fired again, knocking the robot down again and into a little grove of small trees, knocking most of them down. Tree trunks, branches and other stuff fell on the robot. That should give him a couple more minutes extra lead time ahead of the robot.

One thing that he did notice from all of this morphing, he thought – he was so much faster and more flexible. He shimmied down the tree, more rapidly than he used to be able to, and didn’t mind the few inconsequential cuts on his hands and arms.

He decided to put this theory to the test and started sprinting down the trail, and it did feel like he was faster. That should count for a couple more minutes’ lead, and at this point, every minute counted.

As he sprinted down the trail, he felt a vibration on his butt.

He almost jumped out of his skin until he realized it was his GD-issued communicator.

GD communicators weren’t really anything fancy – They were just smartphones. Except that they voice-driven, had almost twice the standby time of the longest-lasting smartphone, twice the signal strength, was smaller than a small post-it note and as thick as two sticks of gum.

“Dammit!” he muttered, “I forgot about my phone! I could have called for help!”

“Hello,” he said as he ran – another thing he discovered he could do better – talking while running.

“Hello, Sheriff,” a girl he didn’t know answered. “Deputy Andy gave us your comm’s IMEI number and we’ve been tracking you for a while now. We saw your jeep by the road. I take it you’re with the robot.”

“More like running away from it, actually. What’s an IMEI?”

“That’s the International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number – it’s the identity code of your communicator.”

“Ahhh. So where are you now?”

“Sergeant Dalton’s team and my team are about ten minutes of your present location.”

“You’re on the road by the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said, slowed down and then stopped. “I’ve stopped moving now so you you’ll know where I’ll drive the robot out. As soon as I do, you guys let him have it. Pour it on since this sucker’s tough!”

“Sgt. Dalton and Mr. Donovan told us, Sheriff. We are properly armed. ETA to your position five minutes.”

“Got it. I’ll flush it out in five, so you better get ready.”

“Don’t worry, Sheriff, we will.”

“By the way, who is this?”

“This is Sergeant Kira Knight, Sheriff Carter. See you in five.” And then she hung up.

“Kira Knight,” he mumbled. “Well, I’ll be...”

- - - - -

Jack looked around and found another likely tree. He climbed up the tree again, and positioned himself, aiming his “shotgun” at the general direction he assumed it would be coming from. He looked at the little glass readout of the gun and it said “05” – only five rounds.

Better make them count, then, he thought.

In a few moments, the robot came out from around the bend. It was “jogging,” looking around for him.

When it was where he wanted it, Jack whistled. It stopped in its tracks.

“Hey, you!” Jack yelled. “Yeah, you, you stupid bucket of bolts! Here I am!”

The robot turned to him, screamed its screeching, metallic scream, and as it was about to move towards him, Jack fired.

He fired low on its torso since he didn’t want it to tip over. The explosion did push it back against the trees on the opposite side of the trail, though.

Jack fired again, almost on the same spot, and the explosion pushed it back again. Jack fired two more times and the robot backed up on its own this time.

“That’s it,” Jack said, and when he saw the robot almost perched on the edge, he fired again, but this time right on the robot’s faceplate. This time, the robot did tip over - right over the edge.

Jack hurriedly climbed down the tree and ran over to the spot where it tipped over, and followed the robot with his eyes as it tumbled over and over until it reached the side of the road – right into the laps of Andy, Sgt. Knight, Sgt. Dalton and the rest of Jo’s people, and they let the robot have it.

Jack had to duck back as large explosions echoed through the trees.

The explosions continued for more than a minute and, as soon as it stopped, Jack peered over the edge and saw the robot in flames, not moving and not struggling. It was as still as sack of nuts and bolts.

A couple of trucks were burning, too – the result of Ross retaliating by throwing rocks, or being hit by burning robot parts, but at least they got the thing.

“Yes!” he cried in triumph, and the people looked up. One of them was Andy. He waved to them, and Andy waved back.

“Hey, Boss!” Andy called.

“Glad to finally meet you, Sheriff Carter,” Sgt. Kira Knight said and stuck her hand out.

Jack gamely reached out and shook her hand.

“Glad to meet you, too, Sergeant,” Jack smiled. “Why ‘finally?’”

Kira smiled. “Do you know a very intense teenager called Dawn Cameron from something called the Jack Watch?”

Jack laughed. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, she has been after me to become a member of the Jack Watch, since I’m one of ‘Jack’s Angels.’”

“Jack’s Angels? What’s that?”

“You know,” Kira said, and gestured to herself and him.

“Ahhh.”

Suddenly, they noticed the silence, and when they looked, everyone was staring at the both of them – near-twins, although Kira was a few inches shorter and her hair was styled better.

“What!” Kira and Jack said, almost at the same time.

to be concluded in Episode 12: “Just Another Day In Eureka” Jan. 31, Thursday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network

In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, finally had his last showdown with the giant renegade robot, RoSS. He also met another one of his DNA donors while he was morphed as her near twin – an incredible sight to see, as Sgt. Dalton and Jo’s other commandos would attest to.

And now, the conclusion...

- - - - -

It was more than two weeks now since Jack and Jo’s people put down the giant marauding robot called RoSS and the humanoid robot called CoNAREE, and everything was almost back to normal.

The damage to GD’s and the town’s buildings, facilities and streets were already repaired, and Henry reported all the events that had happened to the DoD, as well as the conclusions they came to. (Not to mention billing them for the cost of the repairs, which the DoD was only so happy to pay for them.)

The government people and the DoD sent back a muted “good work,” and nothing further was said about it.

This made Henry and Jo feel they were correct that there really was some kind of conspiracy within the DoD trying to get GD secrets, so Henry asked Jo to continue her efforts to find out who these people were.

Still, the DoD continued paying GD their weekly fee of one million dollars and Section Ten continued their work of reverse-engineering Ross, or its remains, as the case may be.

They were waiting for the DoD to retrieve the ConAREE robot as well, but they made no efforts to do so. So far. Oliver Babbish, Eureka’s and GD’s chief legal counsel, said they probably won’t try to. Doing so will mean they’re admitting to owning the robot. As it is, GD’s information on the robot was proof enough, but it would take a while for them to get it through the courts. And, according to Charles’ sources, the DoD was using this grace period to track down the person or persons responsible for the whole conspiracy: though the DoD did want more information on GD’s projects, they were too chicken to do anything really... shady. Those responsible were, however, not. And the DoD was tracking them down in the hopes that they will be able to shield the department from any liability.

Jack, Jo and the others were still inclined to continue legal proceedings, but Oliver said that the DoD could easily disavow the project and say it was not approved nor was it done with the department’s knowledge.

Proving that in court will take time, again, and Oliver said that particular one wouldn’t be as easy to win, given the DoD’s influence, the loopholes in the DoD’s command hierarchy, and their complex budget appropriation and expenditure rules and policies.

In any case, GD’s project was still on the books, and the DoD still continued their payments, which were enough to cover GD’s expenses week-to-week, allowing Henry Deacon and Allison Blake to concentrate on finding more projects instead of worrying about budget.

Which was just as well: because of the seeming distrust that the government and the DoD had shown during the recent robot crisis, Henry, Allison and the rest of GD’s current board of directors unanimously decided to wind down or outright cancel all of GD’s weapons projects, both the US government ones and the ones with other entities, and switched the teams working on these projects to what were considered NOLWEP or non-lethal weapons projects. These wouldn’t be as lucrative as the projects they would replace, but neither would they cost as much to work on nor be as dangerous. All in all, business-wise, it would be a wash.

This was all great for people like Dr. Isaac Parrish, who was heading the NOLWEP team: his unit suddenly had twenty times as many people and resources as before, as well as ten times as many projects. In fact, a new facility was being planned for his team, and an actual, full-blown section was going to be established just for them: connecting labs 300A through 300D were being set up specifically for them. The hope was that, when NOLWEPs was expanded, it would be able to make up for the shortfall of Section Five.

Henry, Allison and Jo heaved a sigh of relief. So they started shopping their new NOLWEPs technologies to private security companies and various city and state police forces, including those from other countries allied to the US. The potential clientele wouldn’t be able to pay like the DoD, but there sure were a lot of them.

Another section that Henry and Allison had high hopes for was Medical. The progress GD was making with the reconstituted Donor Organs Project wasn’t much, but it was making waves in the medical communities that knew about it, even if the directions they were going were away from Dr. Barrows’ tech. Several medical communities offered to fund GD’s work, and this gave the dream of having replacement organs on demand more than just a hope, but something with an even chance of being realized, and it’ll keep Eureka running for several years more, regardless whether they were actually successful or not.

As for Jack’s morphs, Allison and Grace did indeed link up with Dr. Vanessa Calder from the CDC, and they were able to make quick progress. It was like Dr. Calder had a unique insight as well as an unusually deep affinity for Jack’s situation, and with her help, they had established several things:

One was that, yes, Grace was right – Jack had unconsciously influenced his morphs. That’s why all of his morphs were hotties even if the original donors weren’t as hot. But it was a one-time thing – after the first morph, the form was set. Further “tweaks” wouldn’t be possible anymore.

Next - Jack’s situation was likely a permanent situation now – his new DNA has been permanently changed, and his morphs a permanent part of him, and trying to reverse it now would probably kill him.

Next was that, yes, he would be constantly changing - depending on his blood glucose levels and other things, his morph would be triggered – that meant that Jack would have to watch his diet for the rest of his life if he didn’t want to be morphing constantly, and the pills that Allison gave him were next to useless.

There was also no time limit to his morphs – he could morph continuously and it would be fine. There was a minimum five to ten-minute pause between morphs, though, but that was because that was the minimum time his body needed in order to build up enough energy reserves to power another morph - even if Jack drank nothing but his so-called “super juice,” he would still need five to ten minutes in between morphs.

On the up-side, though, there was no penalty from the constant morphing - even if Jack did nothing but morph all day, he would be fine. And the morphing itself had, to some extent, a regenerative effect.

However, Dr. Calder was unable to help them find out if the regenerative effect meant that Jack would always morph to the same state every time – that is to say, if he changed into his Dawn Cameron morph, for example, would he morph into the exact same morph every time, to the same age and state of health? Dr. Calder said she doubted it, but the only way to really answer that was to continue observing him over time.

“For example,” she said, “after that final encounter with that robot, Jackie’s cuts and abrasions didn’t disappear when she morphed again, and the hairdo that Dawn gave her that one time didn’t disappear. I suspect that each of his morphs will progress in age and in general state as any person does, from the point of the last morph, like each morph was a separate person and would age normally and so forth.”

“He prefers ‘Jack,’ though,” Allison said.

“Sorry,” Vanessa said, smiling apologetically.

As to stabilizing Jack, Vanessa agreed with Allison – by using his EM device, Jack could just set it such that, when he morphed, he’ll just morph into the same morph each and every time and, outwardly, no one would notice. He just needed to keep the EM device on him constantly, and tuned to the appropriate wave form.

To that end, Vanessa presented Allison with several watches, necklaces, bracelets and rings – each one actually an EM device functioning like Jack’s EM device and his warning bracelet wrapped up in one.

“Each of these would be appropriate for any occasion,” Vanessa said, in a tone like she was in an infomercial on the Home Shopping Network, “and this entire collection can be yours for free! But wait! There’s more!”

Grace and Allison laughed.

“This might be better, though,” Vanessa said, more soberly, and presented Allison with a felt-covered ring box.

Allison opened it, and found a wedding ring.

“That,” Vanessa said, “would never need any batteries because it would be powered by Jack’s body heat, and would function just like his EM device and his warning bracelet combined.” Vanessa showed a tiny window on the plain, round silvery-gold ring.

“This would display a small number, from one to zero,” Vanessa said, “and would be in a unique color – either red, or blue or green or yellow – that gives you forty unique numbers in all, and would indicate which morph. Also, if the number blinks the way her bracelet does now, that means she’s about to change, and if she presses the window down, she can select which morph... I mean ‘he’...”

Allison studied it up close. Aside from the tiny crystal screen, which, from a distance, looked like a little diamond, it looked exactly like Jack’s wedding ring, and if one weren’t looking for the tiny window or screen, one would be liable to not notice it at all.

Vanessa reached out and held Allison’s hand.

“My friends in Warehouse 13 made it look and feel like an exact duplicate of Jack’s wedding ring, so he wouldn’t ever not have it with him. Look at the inscription inside.”

Allison looked, and she saw the inscription that she knew so well – they had even copied that. And she started crying.

“Well,” Vanessa said gently, letting go of Allison’s hand, “here’s another gift for you.” She handed Allison something else. It looked like a thumbdrive.

“What’s this?” Allison asked as she sniffed and wiped her nose and eyes.

“You stick this into the USB charging port of one of your chairs, have Jackie sit down in the chair, and then trigger a morph.”

“You mean...”

Vanessa smiled at her and nodded.

“Ohmigod.”

- - - - -

After Vanessa left to fly back to Atlanta (with a short side trip to South Dakota first), Allison gave Grace a hug and rushed out.

“Good luck!” Grace called after her.

Allison jumped into her car and started driving out of GD. But she didn’t know where to go. She directly called the radio in Jack’s jeep using her phone (something she could do, at least in Eureka), but no one was in the jeep. She tried the patrol car’s radio even though Andy was the one who usually drove the car.

“Yes, Ms Blake,” Andy answered.

“Andy, where is Jack?”

“He’s in the Sheriff’s Office, Ms Blake,” he said. “Can I be of service?”

“No, but thanks. Oh, wait! Yes, there is something – can you call Jack and ask him to stay put? Tell him it’s important.”

“Sure thing, Ms Blake. Anything else?”

“Not right now, Andy. But thanks!”

She hung up and went straight to town. As soon as she got to Main Street, she went straight to Andy’s parking spot. In her agitation, she didn’t do a good job of parking, and her front tire went up the sidewalk.

She rushed into Jack’s office, ignored Jack and went straight to Jack’s pantry. She got the biggest tumbler there and started putting powdered Tang and about forty-eight teaspoons of sugar in it.

“Hey, Allison. What...?”

She filled it almost to the brim with water and furiously started stirring it.

Jack was currently in his Alexandra Ambrose morph and was wearing a uniform that was a close lookalike to his old Jack Carter uniform, except that it wasn’t one of the fit-anyone kinds, so it wasn’t form-fitting.

“Honey, I just morphed an hour ago...”

“Just sit in the chair, Jack! Now!”

Jack raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! Be cool.”

Jack sat down in the diagnostic chair. Allison handed him his “transformation juice.”

“Bottoms up!” she said.

Jack looked at her, shrugged and drank the syrupy juice. Allison brought out the thumbdrive, plugged it into the chair and switched it on.

Jack looked at her manic expression in a bit of alarm, but held his tongue.

As they waited for the morph, Allison unblinkingly stared at his face with such intensity, it worried him.

“Allison?”

“Dammit!” Allison muttered. “Morph already!”

And then in moments, he did.

The buzzer sounded but Allison kept on staring at his face.

“So,” he said, “what do I look like?”

Allison lunged at him and gave him a kiss like she never had before.

It was like coming home.

- - - - -

Jack ran into Café Diem and looked for Vince. He was so excited to tell someone but he couldn’t find Vince, nor any of his other friends.

He went to the nearest table.

“Do you know where Vince is!” Jack demanded.

The two diners looked at him in confusion. The one in the checked shirt shrugged.

But he couldn’t hold on to his excitement anymore. “Whoooo!” he yelled at the two diners, and ran out of the café.

After he left, Vince came out, wondering what the commotion was all about.

“Who was that?” Vince asked Charles Grant, aka Trevor Grant, aka Trent Rockwell.

“It was the sheriff,” Charles said nonchalantly as he sat at the counter, and then took a bite of his burger.

- - - - -

After Jack calmed down and told and showed everyone he could find that he knew on Main Street, Allison came out from his office and sat him down on one of the benches by the Archimedes statue.

Truth be told, though, she knew Jack was only getting eight words out of every ten, but that was okay. At least he was getting the gist of it.

I guess that’s good enough for now, she thought.

She also thought not to tell him about his voice. He looked the same and seemed the same. He was also the same age and had the same incipient baldness (she giggled). But his voice wasn’t the same as his old voice: it had stayed female. He had the same voice that he had with all of his other morphs, and though his new voice sounded low but sexy and sultry when he was a female, as a man, the voice wasn’t exactly... right. She decided to tell him later. Right now, she didn’t have the heart.

After Jack called Andy and told him the good news, he told him he was taking the rest of the day off. He and Allison went home to get reconnected and do some other things.

Besides, he need to change again – though the uniform fit (barely), the underwear was extreeemely uncomfortable.

- - - - -

Allison, Jack and the kids finally got used to things, especially since Jack can pick who he morphs into now, even though he was still having difficulty controlling when he morphs.

It was all about controlling his diet, Allison kept on explaining. But he really was doing his best, he said. He kept on saying to her and the kids, “I could do it if I really wanted to... but I don’t really want to...” That would always be greeted with Allison or Kevin rolling their eyes, and the girls just giggling.

The longest he’d gone without morphing was forty-eight hours, and according to everything they now knew, he could actually make it a continuous thing. But, of course, the human body wasn’t a machine, and controlling one’s blood glucose levels wasn’t as precise as adjusting a thermostat.

So, for the times that he couldn’t stop his morphing, he’d just make sure which of his other morphs he’d change into. He would just preset all his EM devices – the watches, bracelets and the wedding ring that Dr. Calder gave them, or his original mouse-device – to twenty-two (twenty-two, or Green-Two on his new wedding ring, was his Jack Carter morph), but after twenty or twenty-one repetitions of the same morph, it’s like his body needed to reset. So if he pre-selected twenty-two again after the twentieth or twenty-firtst Jack Carter morph in a row, his body would just pick a random morph. Although after four or five other morphs, he could go back to morphing into Jack Carter again.

When he couldn’t stop morphing to something other than his Jack Carter morph, at least Jack could pick which one. Allison had two favorites – number nineteen and number twenty-three (or Blue-Nine and Green-Three on his ring): his Emily Rosewater and Jennifer Morris morphs. Allison liked them because they were around Jack’s age, so she wouldn’t feel too much like a pedophile if they... did stuff, and Jack liked them because Allison liked them.

So, today, since he‘d been Jack Carter for twenty morphs already, he decided to switch his EM device to Green-Three – his Jennifer Morris morph.

He still had seven or eight more morphs that haven’t come out yet, but that didn’t feel too important at the moment. He will eventually get around to that sometime, he kept on saying to himself. At the moment, he was just enjoying being himself again.

Today was little Kimmy’s checkup day. Sure, Allison could perform Kim’s checkup herself, but that was a professional no-no. And besides, Allison preferred to go to a real pediatrician, and the nearest one that Allison was comfortable with was in Portland, which was a two-hour drive away.

Zoe was visiting from Johns Hopkins, making the family complete for once, so Allison suggested making it a kind of outing. Kimmy and Jenna were always happy when their big sister was around, and a road trip was just the ticket to reconnect.

Zoe asked Jack and Allison if it was okay to ask Pilar to join them, since Pilar’s people were away and would only be back later that night. They agreed, making their little group seven.

Two older adults, three younger adults and two kids were too many to fit in a car, so Jack borrowed a mini-camper from GD. At least it would be a comfortable trip.

Arriving at the clinic, they found that they were a trifle early. There were a few patients ahead of them, so Jack shooed the others away and told them to go and have brunch or something.

The three nodded and Zoe picked Jenna up and said they’ll do some exploring instead.

“Bye Kimmy!” Jenna said, and waved to them. “Bye Mommy and Daddy!”

Kimmy waved back.

As Allison and Jack waited, Kimmy asked to be carried by Jack, and Jack picked her up and put her in his lap.

Allison looked at the two of them as Kimmy comfortably kept her arm around Jack’s neck. And she wondered.

“Kim,” Allison said, “how do you feel about your dad changing into a lady?”

“What do you mean, Mommy?” she asked. She didn’t understand the question.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that Daddy keeps on changing?”

She shrugged. “We live in Eureka.”

Allison and Jack looked at each other and laughed.

“You’re right, honey,” Jack said and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Besides,” Kim said, “I can always tell it’s Daddy.”

Allison looked at Jack.

“How can you tell it’s Daddy?”

She shrugged again. “I just can. Jenna and I can always tell even though Daddy’s in disguise,” she mock-whispered to Allison.

“You can?”

“Yeah. Me and Jenna can, every time.” She looked at Allison. “Can’t you?”

Allison and Jack looked at each other again, Allison grinning and Jack looking a bit pained.

“It’s the voice, huh?” Jack said.

Kimmy giggled.

Jack had been practicing modulating his voice, following some lessons he bought from some transgender store (they were video classes that were meant for transgender men, to try and make their voice sound more masculine), and it seemed to be helping, though not by much.

Anyway, Jack had to stop all this introspection since, after a few minutes, Dr. Keller’s nurse-receptionist called them. Allison picked Kimmy up and they went to the desk.

“Ahhh, that is Dr. Allison Blake,” Jack pointed at Allison, and that is Kim Carter, her daughter.”

“And you are...?”

“Ahhh,” Jack said, “I’m Jennifer Morris, a family friend. Jack Carter couldn’t make it so I came along to keep the girls company.”

The nurse smiled. “Ahhh. It’s all good then. The doctor’s waiting so in you go!”

And the three went in.

As soon as the door closed, the nurse’s smile disappeared. She picked up the phone on her desk and dialed a number.

“Hello, Mrs. Frederic,” the nurse said to her boss, and listened to the other party. “Yes, that’s right. They’re here for little Kim’s two-month checkup – like clockwork. Both of them. Yes, she said she was someone named Jennifer Morris. Yes – very convincing. Dr. Calder was totally right. What should I do now?”

She listened for a bit.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll let the doctor finish their little girl’s checkup and then hand Sheriff Carter the envelope before they leave.”

She listened to her boss for a bit.

“Yes, ma’am. Totally believable. She actually makes quite a lovely lady. A little too tall, though.”

She listened again.

“All right ma’am. I won’t raise any suspicions then. Leave it to me.”

She hung up, took out a pack of letter envelope labels, stuck a sheet of them in her vintage electric typewriter and typed the following on one of the labels:

She then took out a sealed UPS letter-envelope sized packet from her desk and stuck the label on it.

- - - - -

The little road trip to Portland was fun, and Jenna loved the Marionberry Pie they had. Kimmy, following her big sister’s example, said that she liked it, too. Allison bought half a dozen of them and put them in the camper’s little fridge, to give to friends later.

They also bought a few boxes of Moonstruck Chocolates – one of them for Grace, one for Jo and one for Holly. Allison said she’d leave it to the girls to share them with their boys.

They also bought several bricks of Tillamook cheese and several bottles of Oregon’s top Pino Noir.

With all the food they ate, Jack just knew he’d be morphing, so he made sure his EM wedding ring was set to “23” or green-three, his Jennifer Morris morph. So if he did morph, no one would notice.

And as they did the mom-and-dad-and-kids thing with Jenna and Kim, Kevin, Zoe and Pilar went for a nice boat ride instead.

All in all a nice day, except for one thing.

Just before they left the clinic, the nurse handed Jack a UPS envelope. He looked at the name and was surprised, to say the least. He showed it to Allison and they shared a look. Jack asked the nurse where it came from, and she shrugged saying that a UPS messenger passed by to drop it off while Kim was being checked by the doctor.

“Didn’t you have that delivered here today so you can pick it up?” she asked innocently.

Jack looked at the nurse suspiciously but didn’t push it.

He and Allison hurried to their mini-camper and Jack went to the back. Eventually, he found one, under the junk in the toolbox.

Allison looked at all the junk.

“This camper’s from Henry, huh?” Allison laughed.

Jack nodded and slipped the letter into the box he found, and put everything else back into the toolbox.

Jack explained that the box was for isolating infectious, toxic or dangerous material, making sure that the letter would be bio-isolated until they got back to GD and had it checked out.

- - - - -

When they got back home, it was around seven, but the trip was fun, and everyone enjoyed it.

The topic of discussion at the time was Jack’s morph. Zoe begged Jack to morph to someone else – she wanted to see him change.

After all the cajoling, Jack finally agreed. He switched his EM wedding ring device to “19” or blue-nine, and told Zoe she had to watch out for the change. Jack explained that the change just happens on its own without his control, and it happens very fast.

When they got to Eureka, they first passed by Pilar’s folks’ house. There were lights on so that meant her folks were back. Pilar carried a marionberry pie and a bottle of Oregon Pino Noir for her folks.

Zoe gave Pilar a hug and said goodbye, promising to meet up again the following day. When she got back in the camper, though, Jack had already changed into his Emily Rosewater morph.

“Dammit, I missed it!” she complained.

Jack shrugged. “Sorry, honey.”

He dropped everyone off at the townhouse and then drove the camper to Henry’s and Grace’s.

Henry came out.

“Jack, I appreciate you bringing it back, but I assumed you’d bring it back to GD,” he laughed.

“I have to tell you something,” Jack said. “Ride with me back to GD so I can tell you.”

Henry knew enough to know that Jack was being serious, so he told Grace and rode with Jack.

After Jack was finished telling him, he handed Henry the bio isolation box.

“So it’s in here.”

“Yes.”

They parked in GD’s motor pool and got out.

“Okay, let’s go to Section Five.”

They got to Section Five where Henry had the box and the letter inside tested for everything they could think of, and all the tests were negative. No anthrax, no poison, no radiation, no nothing.

Jack unsealed the box, opened the envelope and read the note typed up on an official Treasury Department letterhead.

My name is Irene Frederic. I am a senior director in the US Department of the Treasury, and I am also in charge of a facility in South Dakota called Warehouse 13.

I am sure you’re familiar with Warehouse 13: one of our people, Claudia Donovan, assisted you several years back, and your then-director, Dr. Douglas Fargo, also assisted us with our security systems.

In any case, I’d like to let you know, Sheriff Carter, that your exploits and sterling reputation have reached us in the Secret Service and in the government’s other security agencies, and we believe we can use your unique capabilities and expertise.

Our country is beset by many enemies and critical situations of a national nature, and we have need of your assistance – on a purely when-available basis only, of course: your work in Eureka and Global Dynamics is extremely important and we would not want to deprive Eureka of their sheriff.

So if you are interested in serving your country, Agent Myka Bering of the Secret Service, and Dr. Devon McMasters from the New York Police shall be coming to the Sheriff’s Office tomorrow at 10:00AM. I would appreciate it if you, Sheriff Carter, can make yourself available to them at that time.

Thank you, and please say hello to your friend, Doctor Deacon, as well.

Sincerely yours,

He passed the letter to Henry, and Henry read the letter rapidly.

Henry then picked up his tablet, typed something on it, and read the results.

“Well, this Irene Frederic checks out,” Henry said. “She is indeed a director in the Secret Service and the Treasury Department, and is the head of Warehouse 13.”

“I remember Claudia Donovan! But tell me again - what exactly is Warehouse 13?” Jack asked him.

“I don’t know – Fargo’s the one that that really knows about Warehouse 13. All it says here is it’s a security agency. If you ask me, there are too many security agencies already.”

“I heard Warehouse 13 mentioned recently,” Jack said. “Now, where did I hear it? Let me see... Doesn’t that friend of Allison’s - the one she and Grace were consulting with about my morphs – isn’t she connected with Warehouse 13?”

“Vanessa Calder, yeah.”

“Do you suppose this is connected to my morphs?”

Henry shrugged. “I didn’t think of that. Yeah, could be.”

“Hmmm...”

“Here’s another thing,” Henry said, “did you notice she started with ‘good evening?’ Picking a specific time of day isn’t the thing to do when writing a letter, you know.”

Jack shrugged. “Probably a mistake.”

“And why not give a date range for that visit? Why was she so specific that it had to be for tomorrow at ten?”

“Maybe she’s just bossy.”

“And why did she include me in her note? When it was clearly meant for you.”

“I don’t know... maybe it’s just she knows that you’re my friend.”

“Maybe... Maybe you’re right. Or maybe she knew you were gonna read the letter tonight, and knew I would read it with you, and knew that you’d be available at ten tomorrow and already sent her people. Now how can she know that, Jack?”

Jack looked at him. “That’s creepy, Henry.”

- - - - -

The following morning, Jack made sure he was in his office before ten. He also made sure Andy was there with him, just in case.

And almost exactly at ten, two women in what Jack thought of as FBI uniforms – plain collared blouse, dark blazer, dark slacks and low, black leather pumps – came in.

Both were remarkably pretty – the taller brunette in a very efficient, no-nonsense secret agent kind of way, while the blonde one was more like a Victoria’s Secret model slumming or something, especially with her long, free-flowing blonde hair and flirty little smile.

That morning, Jack tried to morph into his Jack Carter morph, but it was still not working. Instead, he turned randomly into his Jessica Macnee morph. At least he had a uniform available that fit that morph.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” the brunette approached his desk, hand outstretched. “My name is Myka Bering. I’m from the Secret Service.”

Jack stood and shook her hand. “I’m Sheriff Carter.”

Myka gestured to her companion. “This is Dr. Devon McMasters.”

The blonde smiled and shook Jack’s hand as well. “Doctor?” he asked.

“I’m a forensic scientist,” Devon said. “I work for the police as well as the Secret Service.”

Jack shrugged. “Uhuh.”

Andy stood beside him. “Oh. This is Andy, my deputy.”

Andy stretched his hand, and the women shook hands with him almost reluctantly.

“Is that the one,” Myka whispered to Devon.

“Yep.” Devon said.

Jack and Andy pretended not to have heard that, and Jack gestured for them to have a seat.

“So what can we do for you?” Jack said pleasantly.

“It is our understanding, Sheriff,” Myka said, “that you received a letter from our boss, Mrs. Frederic?”

“Yes. I take it this has something to do with my morphs?”

They didn’t respond.

“And what does Andy have to do with this? He wasn’t mentioned in the letter.”

They didn’t reply to that as well.

“You probably know what he is already, too, given how reluctant you were to shake hands with him.”

“Well, Mrs. Frederic did say she was pretty sharp,” Devon said to Myka.

“I can see that, Devon,” Myka grated.

“I think we need all our cards on the table,” Jack said. “Yes, I got your boss’s letter. She wants to recruit me to do some part-time work for her and the government, and she sent you two for that. Whatever work that is – it involves my morphing ability, and it somehow involves Andy as well, who you know to be a robot. Now, I think that covers most of what I know. The ball’s in your court now.”

Jack folded his arms and looked at them sternly. Andy, who was standing beside him, did the same thing. To anyone else, that would have been funny, but for Myka and Devon, it was intimidating as hell, since they came in not being completely open.

So they explained.

Mrs. Frederic would like to hire him on a per-case basis to do what was essentially espionage work, using his morphing ability as his means of disguising himself. The jobs would be very dangerous but vital to the country – no question of politics or any shady motives, and he had the full option of not accepting the assignments.

He will only be used in situations where his physical ability to change himself was absolutely critical, of course, since they preferred to use their own agents otherwise. And since Mrs. Frederic was a believer in partners that one can trust, if Jack wanted it, she can make Andy part of the package.

However, in order to test him out, they’d try him out with a fake or practice mission first, the details of which they can work out together later.

Mrs. Frederic also realizes that Eureka and GD are not government anymore, so he, as well as the township of Eureka, would be compensated. The rates can be discussed later.

Myka passed over a manila envelope. It was supposed to contain draft contracts, both for him and for the township of Eureka.

Devon also slipped Jack a little business card.

“To use your words, Sheriff, the ball is now back in your court,“ Devon said. “That number is where you can contact us,” Devon said. “Let us know what your decision is. There’s no timetable. Call us anytime. A week, a month, a year – whatever. This is a ‘just-in-case’ thing for Mrs. Frederic. Our boss is the type that wants to know what kind of resources she has available to her beforehand.

“If you need to know anything, or have any questions, you can also call. We don’t guarantee that we will answer your questions, but it can’t hurt to ask, right?” She smiled at Jack, and he couldn’t help but smile back. The girl was really pretty.

- - - - -

“So,” Myka said, “what do you think?”

“I guess I agree with Mrs. Frederic,” Devon said. “That Sheriff Carter is one smart cookie. And, reading her file, she’s plenty tough, too. I wouldn’t mind having her on the team if we could.”

“I can’t believe she could be a man underneath all that,” Myka said, as they both got in the car.

“What do you mean you can’t believe,” Devon said, closing her own door. She gestured to her own boobs. “Exhibit A!”

Myka shook her head as she started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Your situation is a totally different thing.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe Doctor V?”

“Never mind what I believe or don’t believe,” Myka said. “Besides, I just betcha she won’t call.”

“I don’t know about that,” Devon explained. “Remember what Mrs. Frederic explained? The government doesn’t subsidize GD anymore. They need the money.”

“For that amount of money,” Myka said, “I’d be willing to be a transvestite for a year!”

“I tried that already, hon,” Devon said. “Totally not fun ah-tall!”

“Okay, okay. Now that we’re done here, what’s next?”

- - - - -

“What do you think, Andy?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What do you think, Boss?”

“Well, if these people are serious, and since Allison says her friend Vanessa trusts this Mrs. Frederic so she trusts her, too, then I am seriously considering it. I think it’s important to be on the right side of the truly important things. You know?”

Jack opened the manila envelope and read through the draft contracts. “Wow!” he commented. “Henry has to see this!” He passed them to Andy, who read them in less than five seconds. Afterwards, he handed back the papers.

Andy looked at his boss. For whatever reason, it was only Sheriff Carter who could explain things to him in a way that his logic systems could properly parse.

To Andy’s main logic algorithms, it was an important thing to be part of the “important things.” But in the hierarchy of his inventory of priorities, where following the instructions of Sheriff Carter, the protection of the citizens of Eureka, the welfare of Sheriff Carter’s family (in his database “Sheriff Carter’s family” was equivalent to “Andy’s family”) are on the top, as well as his “relationship” with his boss’s smart house AI, Sarah, he was unable to parse out “truly important things” – what are they, and where do they fall in his list?

He therefore engaged his data-gathering protocols.

“Boss, what are the ‘important things?’” he asked.

Jack shrugged. “It’s hard to answer that, Andy,” he said. “I guess you have to look at things in a bigger way. For example, instead of just thinking of yourself, think of your family, too. And you can then expand that further. Instead of thinking of just you and your family, you can include your friends. And then, expanding that, it could be you, your family, your friends and your neighbors. And then you can expand it to include your town. And then maybe your country, too, and so on and so on.”

“But, Boss, why should I think about the entire country? Who are they that I should?”

“True, but whether or not someone is a stranger is only important in certain situations, right? Helping people is the important thing. As to who to help - well, say, helping an old lady across the street will only be possible if you know if that person is really an old lady requiring help, and knowing that the lady wants to cross the street, and if you are in the same area so that you are even in a position to help the person, right?”

“Aren’t those things self-evident in the question?”

“Are they?”

Andy stopped. “What do you mean, Boss?” he asked.

“Can’t you use the same method to answer the question of what the important things are?”

Andy nodded. “I will think about it some more. But if there are many ‘important things,’ which should you do?”

“Well, obviously, you try for all of them, but you can’t, of course. But since you know there are things you need to do – Rescue Henry, for example, or stop a nuclear meltdown, or even something as mundane as go to the bathroom, or have lunch, or meet up with someone, or try and get some sleep, or whatever – knowing these things you absolutely need to do, you can evaluate and see the things that you can take care of, right? Prioritize.”

“But, Boss, there could still be still be too many things - how do I know which are more deserving of my help?”

“Assigning value is a tricky thing. Any normal person will use his own yardstick. One can use his sense of compassion, or his, quote, set of values, or, quote, sense of justice. For us officers of the law, it’s easier – we have the law as our means of judging that. But as a human, I will temper the law with my, quote, sense of compassion.”

“What is that?”

“I’m sure you can look it up.”

“I will.”

“You know, Andy” Jack said and leaned his chair back, “I think it might be fun being a secret agent. You know, going undercover and doing spy stuff so the bad guys can be put away, or prevent the dominoes from falling, and help to preserve the country. I’m actually considering it.”

Andy was getting the context of what Jack was saying even though he knew he wasn’t interpreting the literal words correctly. He was actually getting good at context-driven conversations.

“How about me, Boss? Should I consider it, too?”

“Well, it’s all up to you, actually. Do you really want to do it and work with me? But if ever I go undercover, it would be nice to have someone with me I know I can depend on, like you. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would.”

Jack nodded. “Hey, I promised to tell Henry and Allison about this. Would you mind if I go to GD for a couple of hours?” He waved the manila envelope. “I have to show this to them, anyway.”

“That’s all right, Boss,” Andy said. “You aren’t scheduled for fieldwork until this afternoon, after all.”

“How about you?”

“Foot patrol for the next three hours.”

Jack nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you later, then. I’m off to GD.”

“Okay, Boss. See you later.”

- - - - -

Jack went over to GD and talked with Henry and Allison, and showed them the draft contracts left by Agent Bering.

Henry looked it over, checked his sources and confirmed the authenticity of the documents, while Allison called GD’s lawyer, Oliver Babbish, and he came over.

“Well, Henry,” Oliver said after going through the two sample contracts, “if you say these are legit...”

“They are, Oliver,” Henry said. “They’re genuinely from Director Frederic and the Department of the Treasury, and therefore, by extension, from the President. What do you think?”

“Well... all I can say is that whatever the president wants Jack for, for this much money, it must be something pretty big.”

“But you think it’s...”

“Aside for the obvious differences, it’s a pretty standard arrangement, like standard no-poach service contracts.”

“No-poach?”

“They’d essentially be ‘borrowing’ Jack and Andy for specific assignments, but just temporarily – they’re not being hired away. Eureka’s contract is a ‘fee’ to allow them to borrow our sheriff and deputy sheriff for assignments not exceeding a week, and with an additional section for Andy’s services.”

“What about Jack’s contract?”

“As for Jack’s contract, it’s more straightfoward – it’s just about the fee for services rendered.”

“Details?”

“Not much on details. I think that’s by design. Jack has the authority to accept or reject assignments, but other than that... And the contracts are very specific on the security. The NDA portions of the two contracts are ironclad. Jack can’t talk about anything, and the same is true with Andy. In fact, if we sign, it specifies that a special circuit designed by Warehouse 13 personnel need to be installed in Andy, its purpose being to erase all his memory from the beginning of an assignment.”

“I don’t think that can be allowed. What if that circuit does something more?”

“It says here that the plans for the device will be provided to us, so we can have the device vetted by our own people if we wanted. We can even fabricate it ourselves.”

“Hmmm... I think they’re being up-front with us, Henry,” Jack said.

“I guess. But all of this is academic, Jack, unless you’re saying you want to do it.”

“But you guys are okay with it?”

Oliver shrugged. “I can’t say anything about the legalities – they’re all pretty legal. But I can’t vouch for the ethics of the assignments they’ll send you on since...”

“I had a talk with Dr. Calder this morning,” Allison said. “She’s confident about the ‘ethics,’ as Oliver puts it, of the assignments. She trusts Director Frederic, so I trust her, too.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Jack said, and took Allison’s hand.

“So does that mean you’re saying yes?” she asked Jack.

“Well, no. Not yet, at least. I need to think about it some more.”

“Well, I’ll go with whatever Jack decides,” Allison said to Henry.

“Okay,” Henry said. “No rush. They said you don’t need to send them an answer right away, Jack.”

“I need to talk to Zoe, though,” Jack said. “See what she thinks. Would that be okay?”

“By all means.”

- - - - -

Allison decided to update her file on Jack’s morphs, prior to sending it to her friend, Dr. Vanessa Calder. Vanessa said she might not be able to come back soon, so this would help update her.

The file was Global Dynamics Employee Case File “CARTER-J-MORPH-EUGD001,” but everyone just called it “Jack’s Morphs.” The file was actually complete, but she went to the end, added a note and electronically signed it.

She wasn’t for it herself, but she wasn’t saying anything either way, leaving the decision to Jack. And whatever he decided, she knew she and the kids would be okay with it. It remained to be seen what Zoe will say, but she was fairly sure she’d have the same take on it. They all loved Jack, and they’ll all support him.

She sighed. She saved the file, punched the button to send it to Vanessa, and went back to work.

- - - - -

Jack went home to their so-called townhouse, and met up with Zoe. She was entertaining the girls while Kevin was with friends.

“Hi, Dad,” Zoe said. “You morphed again? Dammit! And I didn’t see!”

“Sorry, Zoe. But if you really want me to, I can morph again. You just tell me when.

“Yayyy! So what are you doing home?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“Okay...”

- - - - -

After Jack left the Sheriff’s Office, Andy “felt” something akin to being lonely. He knew it couldn’t possibly be like a human’s sense of loneliness. In straight terms, Andy was observing a situation in his sytem where the low amount of data coming into his input circuits was causing sub-optimal performance in his main processor, aka loneliness. To correct that deficiency, he needed to increase input. It was a good thing he was going to do some foot patrol. Seeing more people meant more input. And that would mean less “loneliness.”

He grabbed his radio and proceeded to do a circuit around Eureka’s downtown area.

- - - - -

In about two hours, Andy was more or less done with his foot patrol. His last stop was in Café Diem. Not to eat, of course, but to check with Vincent and his diners.

As explained in the Eureka Sheriff’s Operations Manual, “by talking and chatting with people, a peacekeeping officer can increase the community’s confidence in the said officer, as well as allowing the officer to unearth potential concerns of the community.”

And where else could one get the best gossip and conversation in Eureka than in Café Diem?

So he chatted with Vincent and most of the diners that he knew. Nothing big - just small talk.

As he was chatting, a very tall brunette came in.

She was wearing high heels and something Andy knew was sometimes referred to as an “LBD” – a little black dress. Over that ensemble, the girl was wearing a black high-fashion trench coat.

Andy didn’t recognize her, although her general features correlated with Kayley Panabaker, the daughter of Dr. Elise Panabaker, GD’s chief librarian. But then, Kayley was five-foot four. This girl was over six feet tall.

“Hey, Andy,” the girl said as she posed provocatively by the café’s doorway. “How do you like my new outfit? Zoe and I picked this out for fun. What do you think? Do I look like a genuine spy?”

“Hey, Boss,” Andy said. “Does this mean you’ve decided?”

Jack shook his head. “Heck, no. I’m just trying out the look for fun.” She posed again. “So?”

“Well... That’s definitely a different look for you. For sure.”